


Blue Lights

by Kaiseriin



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2019-11-25 20:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 68,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18171224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaiseriin/pseuds/Kaiseriin
Summary: Mila is moved between foster-homes; because of her past mistakes, she struggles to find a place to stay, until a home on the Southside offers to take her in. Soon, she meets the Serpents. Through them, she meets Sweet Pea. • [SweetPeaxOC, Season Two] •





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! I just wanted to say that this version of the 'foster-system' is really based on the way Riverdale exaggerates institutions (like the hospital still having uniforms with a fifties-style) etc. So, evidently, it is all more exaggerated to match. I have also posted this on FF, if you happen to see it there, too. I like Sweet Pea as a character and think there is more behind the hothead attitude. Some backstories of Serpents in particular are entirely my invention because of the fact that Riverdale does not (or has not yet) revealed everything about them, so mine might contradict what is eventually shown. 
> 
> Either way, enjoy and please review. Thank you!

  _**chapter one: sewing love into your is my job** _

* * *

Bathed in the soft, orange warmth of sunlight, slumped against a bench with shoulders held tight together, our hands pulled at strips of cotton-candy, little tufts held in a cone of lilac-coloured paper, curled against the tongue and sizzled into pools of sugar; she told me that cotton-candy came from the clouds spread in dense folds, lost in a slow drift against a rich blend of pinkish streaks and yellowish swirls, that small fairies had been sent for each spool spun from that delicate fluff. Beneath a wooden pier, there had been the faint lap of the ocean against a beige shoreline, the froth of whitish foam, breath of the ocean, made of kisses from the mermaids whose flicked tails created those speckles of glitter; and those speckles kept them hidden from us, she told me, kept them safe against the seabed.

Seagulls swept toward distant rocks, small beaks stretched from echoed caws. She said that the seagulls warn the mermaids once humans come too close. Shreds of newspaper billowed in a crisp breeze, which brought the aroma of salt in the air in the curls of each gust, strands of her hair had whipped against her skin, wrinkled from the lines of laughter that she told me I had brought her; each laugh had drawn a line in her, she said, and so she could trace them in her reflection and remember each breathless wheeze with a mouth stretched like the beaks of seagulls, each bright smile that I had brought her, each shred of happiness that had ever filled her, it had all come from me, she said, and then she had held me in her arms, held me against her chest; bathed me in her soft, orange warmth, my Grandmother held me there.

ii

Bleached in sour-lime frost of the hospital, all of her orange warmth has been deflated from the punctured onslaught of needles, burrowed beneath her skin now speckled in liver-spots and swept of glitter from those mermaids still lain against the seabed. I tear stiff eyeballs around crusted sockets and blink tiredly in the blistered shriek of artificial light in her bedroom, a harsh crack of acid-blue, the stillness of the air, trapped in this stationary existence alongside us. She breathes in a wheeze of mechanical exertion, lungs blown like balloons, all that filled her had been pulled out, unfurled in the pluck of wires, the string of drips, the throb of her heartbeat cast into a rhyme of blips.

I fluff her pillows, brush those fuzzed strands of hair which rest against her now, there comes no curl of wind, no scent of salt in this staleness. I smooth out the crinkles of her bedsheets, fill the bedroom with the sound of idle chatter – but there is not much to tell her, in this place, and the quiet hums between us. I await mouthfuls of sugar and laughter. I await more than acid-blue, more than sour-lime. I await orange warmth, but her hand is cold against mine.

iii

November comes in a rich blend of mellow purples and rich blues spread against the clouds, like an artist had dipped their fingertips into little pots of paint and splashed the earth. Cocooned in pastel wallpaper and linoleum, I sink against an armchair with a pillow beneath me, a hand still looped around hers, and dream of distant beaches, flush woodlands, the old places that we used to drift through. I dream of puddles splashed beneath boots dotted in daisies, the scatter of butterflies from sticky hands outstretched, because I had just been an eight-year-old kid, then. She had been tired, but she had brought me, anyway, swept me from all that pastel, all that linoleum, swept me into colour.

iv

There had been a bedroom for me, too, in her house; she had dipped her own fingertips into little pots and painted the sun upon its powder-blue walls, she painted stars, and then she painted rainbows, painted all that she could think of whenever she thought of me. She let me paint with her, and said,  _this will be your bedroom, Mila, your home_. She danced barefoot, too, spun me around with her, wild circles. I tried to paint her between the suns and stars, a blob with waved curls, black dots framed in stick-lashes, two wobbly lines for lips. It is still there, in our home, those wild sketches, our handprints pressed into eternity –  _or until the paint flakes_ , she said.

v

Somewhere in December, the symphony of her life fizzles out in the tired reeds of her heartbeat, plucked with the melodic percussion of the machines; the orchestra of the nurses summoned in the scuff of shoes, the scramble of doctors like the strings of violin. I wail, bleed myself hoarse in sorrow, the nurses cuff me at the arm and contain me, there are soft words spoken everywhere at once, but those sounds are mute against the shriek of a whistle, pure white noise, but it all becomes a monotonous echo, eventually. and I push from unfamiliar hands which are never hers, stumble backward against pastel, stumble from it all and find myself in a swell of acid white, so much white.

In this blindness, I tear posters from walls, rip them into shreds, kick at the orderlies, snatch a vase of tulips from the windowsill and toss it so that it shatters into greenish trickles and scattered petals, curled in the water, there are shards embedded into me and I push them further, there is too much noise, too much sound in all of this, I push and push at those shards-…

vi

Glimpsed in the swell of sound and colour, I spot a poster not yet torn from its place, not yet torn apart between hands now slick with blood and thin, narrow cuts; but the poster shows lines of soft blue with the froth of whitish foam speckled upon its wavelets, the orange blob of the sun, smudged and echoed outward behind the stretch of seagulls' wings – and suddenly, it becomes apparent, the harsh inhales of each breath, the frail curl of petals furled beneath my boots, the dull throb in hands torn open.

I tremble so much that it frightens me, so I allow those unfamiliar hands to touch me, hold me, haul me outward into offices for reprimands; it is habitual, the biting pluck of shards pulled from skin between the pinch of tweezers, the smoothing of plaster against cut flesh, the blistering sigh of resignation from the next social-worker whose stare is pitiful, whose stare is another flush of:  _who would ever take a kid like this_?

* * *

  **one year later**

vii

Bound in purple bands of rubber, folders slop from a pile, filled with details, foreign names, photographs held beneath colourful paper-clips, composed of foreign faces and foreign smiles, tabbed with little handwritten notes. Through the heaviness of sunlight breathed between off-white blinds in this mint-coloured office, I read about the other children in their homes which I might share – snippets of  _Daisy_  upon a swing-set, snippets of  _Abel_  at a birthday with cheeks rosy in the stickiness of strawberry jam and cream. I notice that all of these children are much younger, barely more than ten, and the social-worker clucks sympathetically that it is a little more difficult to find a place for a sixteen-year-old.

Tactfully, the social-worker does not mention that it is even more difficult for a sixteen-year-old whose files are plump with behavioural issues, whose files are scratched all around the margins with frantic, ballpoint-blue notes, whose files are stamped in circles of red, but I am hopeful that all of those stains might be scrubbed clean with all the effort of these last couple of months, with neither a fight nor a scream - not even a  _shout_. I used to shout a lot, but nobody ever heard me; now, there is a semblance of sound, even if it comes from a soft mumble, and it seems as if I am heard, if only a little.

Nothing has ever confused me more than that.

Between all of the folders, I notice there is one folder which has a black rubber-band and dog-eared edges, separate from the purple smoothness of all the others. I lean forward and place it gently in my lap, leaf through the photographs of a woman whose name is etched into the edges of each Polaroid:  _Ruth_ , whose face holds quiet beauty in the warmth of her peachy cheeks, flowered in plump lips, the faint scatter of freckles, and she seems youthful, at the cusp of her thirties. Slowly, I turn each page and pause at the bold red which fills her margins, like mine, stamps of red because her home is nestled in a neighbourhood which is considered  _hazardous_  –her handwritten note is almost apologetic for all of those spots of red, those ballpoint-blue word, those dense splotches of disapproval, but she finishes it with: _oh, and there is a place nearby that has the greatest chocolate sundaes you could ever dream of, more than you could ever eat no matter how much you tried – or until the ice-cream runs out._

Dropped from the folder, another photograph falls out and I bend to snatch it from the carpet. I read the chunky letters etched around its white frame:  _Rosie_ , balanced with arms outstretched and a grin made of gums, dressed in this little mustard coat, and there is a letter attached in the folder, drawn in childlike stars, dotted in flowers from the blunt-end of a crayon, even though Rosie was not meant to put stuff in there. Still, I peel off the sticker of a blue monster with an overbite for its fangs and pull open her letter; her lines tend to dip toward the end of each sentence, and she writes about her bedroom, she writes about her fishes –  _Spot and Sunny_.

Drawn with large arrows all around it, she has sketched her fishes, scrunched tight at the bottom because she could hardly fit more than that with the giant loop of her letters. I squint at the wonky squiggle of an orange blob, its bulbous lips and coal eyeball, then look toward its companion, a black fish with its fins held high – and from its puckered mouth, she had drawn a bubble that showed the words: _Hi, I'm Sunny_.

I let out a small laugh; it deflates something held in me, some coiled breath, held tight in the chest for much too long, it floods from me in that simple exhale. I place her doodles between the photographs, close the folder and nod. I nod and nod, nod and nod, because the social-worker asks if I can handle little children and handle the neighbourhood and handle all this other stuff before the telephone is lifted, before Ruth is called. I look at the folder, pull it toward me once more, trace them into memory, especially little Spot and Sunny. Stamped beneath all that other stuff about names and dates and intentions, is the town: RIVERDALE.

* * *

 viii

Bruised in rich blues, mellow purples and rings of pink, the clouds drift in a slow crawl; the Southside of Riverdale hums in neon screeches of green from corner-stores, blisters of red from laundromats, but muted brown from the houses boarded at the windows and painted in tags, bubble-names and skulls, love-hearts with initials stretched in between the lines. Somewhere along the line, the houses dwindle into burnt-out hovels, blackened pits, dotted in steel panels in front of each window and door, but then the social-worker turns a block and I glimpse narrow houses, yards split with half-bent fences and yellowed grass. Eventually, we slow in front of a house and I am stood with suitcase in hand, stood with this social-worker on a dark Tuesday night, in this strange town. I feel the flutter of butterflies and the bloom of nausea.

I almost want to ask if I can just be alone, in the old house, in  _our_ house – but then the door opens, and there is Ruth, with the same smile from all of those photographs, only there is a nervousness behind it, just like mine. Rosie is not behind her. I wonder if she has switched foster-homes already, because that happens, sometimes. Ruth hops from the porch and pushes toward me. I am grateful that she does not pull me into a hug or anything, but rather holds out a hand that I can shake.

The social-worker brings us into the house, explains the usual stuff about this trial-period, about how I can call if there is ever a problem, there will be regular visits. Then it is just – well, over, and the social-worker departs into the dense fog, into the orange clouds made from the saturation of the streetlights. Ruth catches loose strands of curly brown hair, pushes them behind her ear, then clasps her hands like she had earlier, as if she wants to appear a bit more… _adult_. She still seems young, even younger in person, late-twenties or just on the cusp of thirty.

I sit with her living-room and glance around at its mint-coloured walls, colourful furniture, small plants all over, drooped from the windowsill, trickled branches dangled from the rim of each flowerpot, and there is something endearing in its fractured terracotta, something familiar in all those cracks. The whole house seems much too bright for the bleakness of the town, or at least, all that I had seen of it so far.

Ruth has a quiet beauty, held in the warmth of her peachy cheeks, flowered in the purse of plump lips and the scattering of freckles that perhaps adds to that youthfulness. Her shoulders are bare, she sits in a pink spaghetti-string top and dark blue jeans, tennis-shoes, a studded belt. I watch her form words in her brain almost as if there is a projector sat behind her eyeballs and it splatters the letters against her walls, so that I can read them, pick them apart. I am used to speeches from foster-homes and social-workers about those same rules, this trial-period, ever a problem, et cetera, et cetera. I await them with dulled patience, worn from repetition. Ruth opens her mouth and says, "Look, I need to be honest with you-…"

For a brief moment, I flush with worry and wonder if she wants to return me; like an unwanted present. She searches for the receipt, she has had enough of me already, she wants me out of this house-…

"Rosie painted your bedroom with me, but she made a little bit of a mess. So, if you hate wonky elephants with even wonkier tails and ears, then you don't need to worry, there's enough paint to fix it. I had planned to do it this morning, actually, but then things got a little busier than expected. I had to get you some bedsheets and new clothes – oh, and if you hate the clothes, we can totally change those too. Rosie chose some pretty cute stuff, but she has this weird thing for rhinestone tops. We can talk about the paperwork, or I can just show you your bedroom and we can figure that stuff out tomorrow, because I want you to do whatever you feel is best to help this transition. I know that sounds awkward, like I read it from a book – because I sort of  _did_ , actually-…"

She trails into silence. I watch the awkward furl and unfurl of her hands. I start to realise that she might be more nervous than I am, that maybe it was a little easier with a kid like Rosie, too small to understand all the shifts in her life. I was in the system for four years before my Grandmother tried to claim guardianship. Even then, I had trial-periods with her, swapped between her home and the foster-home.

Ruth seems to fidget, she toys with her hands, eternally in a tremble, but her voice is soft, her voice is like honey in the hum of this small house, with the thrum of its refrigerator, the fuzzed throb of its radiators, it all melts together. I want to be okay here. I want to be okay. So, I straighten tired shoulders, smile warmly at her.

"Thanks, Ruth. I think I'll like all of it – even the rhinestones. Thank you for taking me in, too," I say quietly, even a little shyly, totally unlike myself.  _I want to be okay_ , I tell myself. I had tantrums all the time, when I was a kid. Like Rosie. Even older. I used to kick against wooden floorboards, held around the waist and torn upward into the arms of another social-worker, flushed beetroot from the screams. I used to scream a lot. I think of my Grandmother, now. I think of oceans. I think of puddles. Wonky elephants, too.

"Oh, Mila, you never need to thank me for that," Ruth replies fondly; there is that childlike smile. In the hall, she taps a fingertip against her lips to shush us both once we shuffle past Rosie's bedrooms, its door decorated in splotched flowers against her door, her name printed in squiggly letters, squiggly like her drawings of her fishes.

The door is slightly ajar. I glimpse a slack mouth, a little mop of black hair against a mountain of pillows and a teddy-bear drooped from a small hand draped against the edge of the mattress. She has a night-light in the shape of a cat's face, whiskers and all. I am in the bedroom across from hers, and the hall is narrow enough that it seems as if we are all cramped together. I am oddly comforted by it, this closeness.

* * *

 ix

Ruth flicks a switch and holds her arms out with a soft  _ta-da_! I drink in the lilac paint, drift toward the floral bedsheets and bookshelf unfilled, the desk tucked into the corner, the wardrobe and fluffy rug, then notice the splotch of lilac paint that mats it with a snort, because I guess that was another mess which Rosie had made, earlier. I follow the trail of lilac toward the skirting-board and find swirls, handprints, and suns painted across the wall nearest to the window, painted in bright yellow. I look at Ruth, who snorts and says, "The yellow was for the bathroom, and I was  _going_ to paint a small sun on your door. Left Rosie for two minutes to talk with your social-worker and-…well, like I said, I can fix it by tomorrow."

"Please don't," I respond softy. I watch her surprise, but then she nods, and I am even more grateful that she does not question me more than that. She lets me unpack, alone. I peel out pyjamas folded in pairs, take off my loose green jacket, brush at its tattered cuffs and stitched patches – cut and sewn, it is the only coat that I ever wear, loose enough that it brushes against my thighs and the cord around its waist is so worn that it only marginally cinches at the waist, and the fur which once lined the hood has been torn off in tufts over the months.

The cord around its waist is so worn that it only marginally cinches at the waist, and the hood is a low scoop, rarely used. I glance at the hospital package of her clothes and place the bag into the closet, then sit on the bed and look at those painted shapes which Rosie had made, the swirls and suns, little handprints.

* * *

 x

I think of the bedroom that I was supposed to have, and all of the other bedrooms I have had since then, full of the shoes of other children and bunk-beds scrunched together, coated in the drawings of home, mothers stood in triangular skirts, stick-armed fathers nearby or entirely absent, circular doodles for the bodies of dogs, tails pricked out in a straight line. The earth was always just a patch of green, the sky stood in narrow blue, and the sun never quite connected, just thrown against the white space in between. I used to help the children draw, used to collect the crayons and place them in boxes afterward – and I did it just to show the social-workers that I was much more calm, much more capable, but then this one kid, Lucas, brought me a doodle of myself, with thin black lines for hair and dressed in a square of green for my jacket with two black lines jutting out at odd angles for my legs. I decided it was not that bad after all, helping them. I did it more often and I forgot about social-workers and all that stuff.

I kept all of the drawings; each wobbled circle which made a face, each butterfly whose colours stretched outside of their wings, each drawing of myself with the artist stood alongside me in front of whatever home we were in then, our fingers linked through the three lines that composed our hands. I kept all of them.

* * *

xi

In the hospital, I used to dream about her a lot, almost nightly. I never really dream about anything at all, anymore. I think about stuff too much. I think about old foster-parents and wonder if I am remembered there, in those old houses, like a ghost whose spirit still drifts around the halls even if I am still here, with a heartbeat. I think about the photographs taken of me at parties, before tantrums, before screams and bruises, and wonder if all of those little snippets of me are held somewhere, like in the shoeboxes that I was told to make to rid myself of anger. I had to write about myself and all of these feelings in me, fold the paper, press them into a shoebox and then – well, stuff them beneath whatever bed I was in that month and let the dust swallow them.

I never brought them with me, so I think about whether some other kid has stumbled across these confessions about the intense need to punch and kick at stomachs and shins, to take each punch from the curled fist of another kid and throw it right back. I think about the shatter of knuckles, the crack of a bone. I broke a hand at ten from a hit, and it still took three social-workers to lift me from the soil, peel me from another kid with arms held around him, to lift me and take me from him, from them.

xii

Sat outside another office, in another hall, I heard one say, "Who would ever take a kid like this?"

xiii

She was meant to take me; my Grandmother, I mean. She used to say that sometimes things went too fast, things slipped from her hands much too quickly for her to grasp, and then she looked at those hands and found them old, found them tired, and she told me to quit the fighting –  _are you stupid, Mila, do you even think before you act, you think you're ever gonna get out of that place, you know this is why your father could never deal with you-…_

xiv

I would rather dream.

* * *

xv

Vibrant sunlight pours into the bedroom, canary-yellow in colour. Sprawled against the mattress on my stomach, poised between that haziness of half-sleep and consciousness, I hear faint giggle, followed by the harsh whine of my wooden floorboards. I squint at a blurry silhouette, pressed against the doorframe with small fists, a familiar mop of dark curls stood in wild, matted bunches all around a pale face. I flop against my pillow with a quiet snort, which I quickly pretend is a snore, snuggling against my blankets and peeking at her from between the folds. I had shared a bedroom with another kid called Brady once, whose morning ritual was a blend of giddy shrieks and leaps around my mattress to wake me – it took a lot of tickles and pillow-fights to make him quit.

Rosie shuffles forward, her small hands clenched against her chin in anticipation; she studies me, studies this stranger thrown into her tiny world of flowerpots and cat-shaped nightlights, studies me with scrunched eyebrows and a tight pout. Carefully, I hold myself still, let out cartoonish snores and shift around tiredly. Rosie pauses, hands held aloft, and pout lost in momentary trepidation. Slowly, she continues, casting suspicious glances at me. I smother a grin, even though my lips twitch and I want to surprise her – so, I bolt upward, collapsing into laughter once she lets out a frantic shriek, her hands clamping against her eyes in little fists and hopping in little jumps for a couple of seconds before she peels apart her fingers to peek out at me.

Grinning at her, I smooth out the clumps of knotted hair from my face and say, "Hey, Rosie. Couldn't wait until  _after_  the eggs and bacon were ready to wake me, huh?"

Rosie drops her little pose and clambers onto the mattress. I am a little surprised by her boldness – a lot of kids like me, sure, but most of them are pretty shy in the first few hours, testing out the waters. Rosie, apparently, is not like most kids. I let out a small, pained groan once she buries my legs beneath her weight, releasing me once she finally reaches the headboard, settling against it. Quite factually, Rosie says, "We only have eggs and bacon on the weekend. Ruth says they're bad for you if you eat them every day. Are you gonna be staying here for a long time?"

I scoot upward to sit alongside her, feeling the carved, wooden outline of the headboard pressing into my spine as I shrug. "Might be. Why, do you mind?"

She shrugs, too. "No. I guess we have enough eggs and bacon to share. Did your Mom leave?"

Thrown by her bluntness, I flounder for a moment. Her stare never wavers from mine. She curls a fist beneath her chin and waits. Slowly, I mumble, "Um, not really – I mean, I was never with her. And I don't really know my Dad, either. Sometimes, I stayed with my Grandmother, but most of the time, I was with foster-parents like Ruth."

"Why?"

"Why?" I repeat dumbly. "Oh. Well, I guess because my Grandmother was ill, and she couldn't handle me, and-…well, I'm a little older than you, so it was harder to find somebody who might-… _want me_."

Rosie is momentarily quiet. "I saw this film once - or at least, I think it was a film, but it might have been something else. It was about this dog. He was really old. He had to live in this small kennel because nobody wanted him. He had to watch all the other dogs who were chosen instead of him, and it was really sad. But then this one family came in and they wanted him. The little dog was so happy, because he got to live with the family forever."

"Do you think I'm the little dog?"

"Not really. He had floppy ears and you don't," she answers lightly, but then she cocks her head in confusion at my snort. "But I think Ruth wants you, even if you're older. I don't think she cares about stuff like that, but she cares about you already. Ruth is like that. But the other kids who came here didn't like Ruth."

"Why not?" I ask, worried.

She shrugs her little shoulders. "I think-…I think it's not that they didn't really like  _Ruth_ , it was more that they just didn't really like the  _school_  or the  _neighbourhood_  because it looks kind of scary at first. But I like it. Those kids kept asking Ruth,  _why would anybody ever want to live in a place like this, it's scary_ -…But there are nice people here too."

"Are you going to show me around, then? Maybe introduce me to these  _nice people_?"

The intense contemplation which had pinched her small face smooths into a bright grin. "Yeah. I can do that. And I guess you can stay for a little while. You can meet Spot and Sunny first, they're my fishes. I already told them about you, but they want to see you in person. Then I can show you all the clothes we got for you. Do you like rhinestone tops? I do, so you kind of have to like them too now, because I was here first, you know, so even if you're older, you have to listen to me anyway, and Ruth said-…" She looks at me, confused again because I smile. "Hey, what's so funny?"

* * *

 xvi

Thundering through the hall toward the kitchen with Rosie right behind me, I find Ruth with three bowls of cereal, along with a carton of milk and a jug of orange juice already plopped onto the table, just waiting for us. She looks between me and Rosie in surprise, because she probably thought the introductions would happen a bit more formally. Then her stare drops toward my t-shirt, and her lips twitch just a little; hot-pink in colour, clustered in hearts, its sparkling rhinestones read: CUTIE.

 

* * *

**two weeks later**

xvii

Ruth finds her old bicycle crumbled in the shed; she fixes its shattered spokes and deflated wheels, cleans its rusted yellow frame, cleans its basket had been coated in thick cobwebs – but it made us all shriek and kick at it once a nest of spiders crawled out from its folds, scattered before Ruth could pour a basin of sudsy, lukewarm water across it to rid the handlebars of all that dust and dirt. Shyly, I tell Ruth that I never learned to ride a bicycle, not in all of those foster-homes. Instead, she scrapes off the clumps of dried dirt between the petal-folds of each plastic flower and tells me to hop on, that she can teach me now. Anxiously, I let her hold me at the shoulder and arm, a tight enough grip that I never topple. She never calls me stupid, not even once. I thought she might, because it seems obvious, to just push against the peddles – but Ruth smiles and, with that honey-toned voice, she tells me everybody is a beginner at something, sometime.

I like the softness of Ruth, the calmness of her. I never had a foster-parent for this long before and I never had one so calm, either.

"Focus, Mila," Ruth urges softly.

I wonder if she can tell that I drift off, sometimes, that I think too much and hardly ever dream anymore. I hold onto the handlebars so tight that my knuckles are bathed in white, but it is much better than those knuckles bathed in cuts and strips of skin torn in shreds from scrapes. Rosie chases after us in delight, her cheeks beetroot from the effort, but she tires herself out and collapses on a curb with a breathless giggle. She wants a bicycle, too. Ruth says, "She wants to be like you, I think."

I blush and shrug it off. I am not sure that anybody has ever wanted to be like me.

Ruth loosens her grip upon the handlebars but remains close so that she can catch and reassure me at each wobble. Sometimes, my boot drops from the peddle just to balance myself, too afraid to hold the bicycle upward for more than a couple of seconds – but soon, it smooths out, and I can loop around the street in a slow circle. Ruth cheers for me, claps her hands.

"You're clapping like I'm a kid," I laugh at her.

"You are," she says. "You are a kid, Mila."

I pluck off a loose petal from those plastic flowers and do not answer her.


	2. chapter two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mila experiences the Northside. Later, shares her bedroom and finds a friend - and a couple more.

 

**chapter two: i jumped in the river, what did i see?**

* * *

The Northside opens itself in a blend of fluffed clouds stamped against blue skies and lush shrubbery, trimmed and proper; the petals of each flower seem fresh, each thorn plucked, each misshapen bud snipped from its stem, drizzled in glimmering specks of droplets cast from sprinklers. Glancing outward from the passenger-seat, I fiddle mindlessly with the loose drawstrings of my jacket and listen to Rosie, whose chatter fills the car, occasionally punctuated with soft, encouraging hums from Ruth. Ruth taps a little rhythm against the steering-wheel and pulls into a parking-lot with neat, structured rows, much like the neat and structured nature of the Northside. Rosie clambers out and I follow her, let her slip her hand into mine, a newfound habit of hers.

I drink in the detail of each shop, the cutesy signs and names printed onto windowpanes in swirled calligraphy, trailing behind Ruth, tugging Rosie alongside me. She babbles about Sunny, her fish, and his sour mood this morning because Spot, the other fish, had eaten more of the fish-food than him. I find myself humming like Ruth, nodding and squeezing her hand every once in a while. Ruth pushes open the glass-door of a stationary-shop and its bell tinkles.

Sunlight stretches against the linoleum in a tired yawn, pours into the aisles of the shop. In the section for kids, with little tables and stools, Rosie clutches a crayon in her hand and colours the scales of a mermaid, tail curled upward, seashell-bra dotted in swirls of red, clashes of purple. Ruth lowers herself onto the small stool meant for children, throwing me an amused glare once I snort at her struggle, awkwardly tucking in her limbs at weird angles just to fit. I sift through colourful pencils myself, flit through the aisles and fill a small basket with a couple of floral notepads and a journal decorated in holographic stars.

Yesterday, Ruth had brought me into her bedroom; she had fiddled with her hands, like Ruth often does, and then she told me that, in two weeks, I would become a student of Southside High, a school just a couple of blocks from her house. I had not been too troubled about it, but then she had explained that the school is a little rough around its edges, its margins filled in shocks of red. I had shrugged it off. I had been swapped between all sorts of schools made of all sorts of edges. Ruth had spoken with Northside High that same night, battling with the administration for almost an hour in low hisses, attempting to convince them to transfer me.

She had slumped tiredly in a chair in the kitchen, telephone-wire wrapped around her wrist. I had heard her quiet sigh, the telephone placed in its cradle. I had heard her collect the teddies which Rosie had tossed around in the living-room, and then I had heard the soft dip of the couch beneath her. I had heard the heaviness of her.

Now, Ruth reaches for a crayon and fills in the hair of the mermaid for Rosie, scratching out scarlet strands. Dimly, I find myself smiling at them, drifting into another aisle filled with pencil-cases and backpacks, idly looking through piles of colourful satchels and lunchboxes. I find a plain, maroon backpack with black straps and glimpse its price-tag, pleased to find it reduced with a large, red sticker stamped against it. Ruth had given me a lot of pocket-money for this, but I still want to be careful. I hear the scuff of shoes against linoleum.

Briefly, the sound reminds me of hospital, and I feel as if I inhale that bleached scent of the ward. I shake it off, glancing upward at the silhouette of the shopkeeper, whose frame is shrouded in darkness from the sunlight behind her. I realise she has been watching me, because she rearranges each pencil-case and straightens backpacks with little reason, taking quick peeks at me between each aisle.

Flushing, I look downward at my basket, half-filled. I stand quickly and approach the counter. Nervously, another shopkeeper rings each journal and notepad, stuffs them into a paper-bag which she folds at the edges. I mutter a quick ' _thanks_ ', then return to Ruth, mumbling that I would like to take a look at the other shops for a little while. Ruth smiles, but it seems tight at the corners, as if she can sense that something is bothering me –  _fifteen minutes and we meet at the car_ ,  _okay?_

* * *

ii

Outside, I breathe a little more easily. I stroll toward the car, lean against its trunk and look upward at the clouds, even though I had told Ruth that I wanted to look at other shops. I am not sure that I like the Northside all that much, because a couple of other people look toward me from the pavement, a blend of curiosity and unease, but I wonder if I am just paranoid, now. I look at myself in the reflection of the side-mirrors. I wonder if the shopkeeper had seen something that I cannot. I wonder if the red in my margins has seeped through into something more visible, as if each word etched into my files has now blossomed on my skin, too.

"Hey, are you all right?"

Surprised, I look away from my reflection, straightening and watching this boy approach, his hands looped around the handlebars of his red bicycle, rolling it alongside him. He attempts a smile, a little uncertainly, because I return a carefully blank expression – although really, I am actually a little embarrassed that he had noticed. Attempting to be cool, I shrug and say, "Yeah, thanks. I'm good."

He studies me, eyebrows scrunched, like he  _knows_. "Never seen you around before. Are you new?"

"You're right, Gideon." I hardly even noticed the other boys approaching from the other side of the street until one loops an arm around  _Gideon_  and then taps at the bell of his bicycle, then at his nose. I watch the other three boys warily, especially because Gideon tenses and tries to shrug off this other boy, but he clamps his arm a little tighter and grins. "You're right, buddy! I don't think  _we_ have ever seen  _her_  around, have we? You starting at Northside soon, honey?"

"Southside," I correct. " _Honey_."

" _Southside_?" he repeats incredulously. He tilts his chin toward the bag in my hand. "Southside  _High_? Then do you wanna tell me why you're even bothering to buy books? I mean, you know half of them can't even  _read_  yet, right?"

Another boy adds, "And the other half can't write, either. Maybe they balance each other out."

"You should probably be more worried about yourself, you know. You got anything left up there in that brain of yours, or do you just hear elevator music all the time?" I ask, glaring at them.

Slipping his arm from Gideon, the boy approaches with his shoulders squared and his chin dipped low. Gideon swallows, his skin flushed in a beetroot stain, splotched against his cheeks, obviously embarrassed. I crane myself to look upward at this boy, whose build is much bulkier than mine and whose height is mammoth in comparison. I feel my hand curl into a tight fist, but I don't want a fight. He bends low and snarls, "You seem awful defensive of the Southside. Let me guess, you're shacked up with some  _Southside Serpent_ , huh? Bet he's got you the best spot in the  _whole_  trailer park – right between his sister and his cousin! Oh wait, they're the same person, aren't they?"

I whistle lowly. "That's a  _good_  one. I bet you ran that by the whole locker-room and they just  _loved_  it, right? But then, I guess with only a brain cell shared between you all, it shouldn't be too hard to make them laugh."

"Mila!" a small voice shrieks; and it feels as if all of my organs fall, somehow, thrown around against the sudden and frantic thud of my heartbeat. I glance behind him and find Rosie skipping toward me, clutching paper-bags which seem to be filled with fluffy journals. She drops one, turns to pick it up and brush off the dirt. While she does, the boy turns toward me with this mean, calculated smirk, and sneers, "Don't tell me – another one of Ruth Reed's little  _orphans_? Oh, little Orphan Annie, why didn't you  _tell_ me? An  _adopted_  Southsider is still the same as any other Southsider. You just remember that."

Harshly, he bangs against my shoulder and his friends follow behind him. Gideon is still there, hovering, hands clamped uselessly around his handlebars. I feel Rosie loop her hand around mine and she looks between me and Gideon, confused. Gideon swallows again and awkwardly nods at me. "Sorry," he mumbles, before he pushes at the pedals of his bicycle and pushes hard, pumping toward the park nearby and letting myself and Rosie stand in silence.

"Did you make friends?" Rosie asks, looking doubtful of her own question.

"Yeah," I answer hoarsely. "Lots of friends."

"Oh," she mumbles. "But we're still friends, too, right?"

Pulling myself away from staring at the park, I look down at her and find her looking upward at me. I squeeze her hand and smile at her. "You're my best friend, Rosie - if you want to be."

She considers this, pursing her lips. "Yeah, I think we can be best friends. But Spot and Sunny were my friends first, so maybe you should try to be best friends with them, too."

I want to laugh at that, but I hold it in. I know Rosie does not have an awful lot of friends, like me – scales or otherwise. So, I squeeze her hand again. "Yeah, we can talk to them. Does that mean I'm your best friend, but I'm lower on the list? Like, beneath the fishes?"

Rosie explains the complexities of this structure with her usual excitement. While she speaks, I look around for Ruth, because it has been more than fifteen minutes and I thought I had seen her behind Rosie. I spot her in front of another shop and think she has simply been distracted by another sale, but then I realise there is a blonde woman talking to her, blocking her path before she stalks off. Ruth fixes herself and then starts to come toward us. I pretend to be focused on Rosie, help her into the car once Ruth comes along, fasten her seatbelt and clamber into the front myself. Ruth tells me about bargains, bland stuff – but her hands grip the wheel, and she subconsciously glares out at those fluffed clouds stamped against blue skies and lush shrubbery.

I wonder if she hates the Northside, too.

* * *

iii

Moonlight pours between the curtains, spills into the creases of the bedsheets and fills them in pools of sliver. Tiredly, I pluck fluffy lint from the coarseness of the mattress, cocooned in gentle warmth, which is then sliced apart in the sudden thump of the front door, followed by muffled voices. I lift myself from my pillows, hold myself still and strain for the slightest sound. There are quiet footsteps and a soft knock against my door; pale-yellow light stretches from the hall and into my bedroom in a slow yawn. Ruth peeks in and then slips into the bedroom once she realises that I am already sitting against the headboard, like I had with Rosie, but this is a whole lot different.

Quietly Ruth explains that Toni is another girl from the Southside, that her uncle had tossed her onto the curb tonight, so she came to Ruth. I catch her drift once she tilts her chin toward the closet, which holds a pile of spare blankets, probably in preparation for other unexpected arrivals. Ruth pulls out woollen blankets, settles them onto the floorboards; the creases are covered, pillows thrown around should she want them. Toni comes into the bedroom with one hand latched around the strap of her backpack, the other looped tight around her belt, standing a little awkwardly as if she isn't really sure what to do with herself. She turns to plop that backpack onto the floorboards, and I glimpse the coiled body of a serpent stitched into a patch on the back of her leather jacket, its scales composed of lush green, its forked-tongues held in a hiss; the letters sewn around it read, SOUTHSIDE SERPENT.

I think about that boy, earlier today -  _let me guess, you're shacked up with some Southside_ _Serpent_ _, huh?_  Toni shuffles from the bathroom, sheepish because she had to borrow some pyjamas of mine, dotted in little daisies, which seems distinctly unlike the leather, chains, and chunky boots which she had worn an hour beforehand, and then she pulls off each ring and each bracelet with slow precision. She looks at me and mutters, "Nice pyjamas."

"Nice leather," I retort. "Did you bring the black lipstick and heavy metal, too?"

Reflected in the mirror alongside her, her expression is calm and reserved, her hands are careful and light while she arranges her rings in a pile. I am impressed by her sereneness, the natural manner in which she carries out each task, especially considering the fact that her uncle just kicked her out.

"No," she replies, "I figured you already had some."

"All out."

"What a shame – guess I'll have to go sleep on a bench in the park after all." I look away from her, a little uncomfortable. I am not sure what to say. She seems to know it, too, and rolls her eyes, turning toward me with one eyebrow raised. "Okay, that fell flat. I guess I should have saved  _that_  one for Dr Phil too, huh?"

I smile. "Probably. but Ruth is a close second to him, I think."

* * *

iv

A little while later, I catch her a momentary lapse in her expression once her rings have been removed, leather pulled off, and she looks at herself in the mirror with this distant sheen in her eyes, like she has just noticed something which is not there for me. I wonder if she feels like I did earlier, wondering if all that red has seeped through onto her skin – like everybody  _knows_. I look away, look at the sloppy pile of blankets clustered together. I slip from my bed and hop onto the heap of blankets. Her eyes dart toward me, her eyebrow raising once again.

"You can take the bed," I offer.

Snorting, she turns around, mouth lifted into a half-smile, but the humour seems forced. "You  _really_  want to argue about who gets the bed, huh? Trying to be nice to your unwanted guest?"

"Not much of an argument if you just take it," I shrug. I flop backward against the blankets, arms held behind my head, followed by a small smile at her. She returns it and slinks toward me, dropping alongside me with a flick of her pink-coloured hair. I add, "And I never said you were  _unwanted_ , either."

"Well, not much of an argument if we both just take the floor, either," she smirks.

* * *

v

Somewhere in the night, she tells me that she had been thinking about just how  _mean_  her uncle had become, each slurred word spat in the aftertaste of bile from another night spent with purplish lips curled around the mouth of a bottle. We stay stretched out like that, quietly looking at the smoothness of my ceiling. We stay quiet, thinking about a lot more than just her uncle, now.

I notice that she looks at the drawings pinned by my desk, the childish elephants painted across my wallpaper in colourful splotches, and that sheen in her eyes seems even more pronounced, but she scrunches her lips and holds it all in. I blink in a quick flutter, looking toward the ceiling again. Then something occurs to me, and I blurt, "Why didn't we both just take the bed instead of sleeping on wooden floorboards?"

Toni shifts to look at me, probably startled that I had spoken so suddenly, but then her stare flickers upward at the bed and she smiles – that sheen dries in the crinkle of the skin around her eyes once she smiles, and then she laughs, a really beautiful sound which reminds me of that honey-warmth which comes from Ruth whenever she speaks. I smile at her and she returns it, snorting softly and shaking her head. Then she looks toward a dent embedded in the drywall.

Slowly, a fond smile blooms on her face, and there is a laziness in the movement of her limbs when she lifts herself to point at one dent in particular. "You wanna know how that got there? Sweet Pea – a friend of mine – more like family, really, but the guy has such a crappy temper sometimes. Well, this was one of those 'sometimes' and he punched right through the wall, completely cut up his hand. He thought Ruth might kick him out for it, but she didn't. She patched his hand up and let him stay even longer. You got real lucky, Mila, you know that?"

"I know," I mumble. "Do you mind if I ask about the Serpents?"

She contemplates the question for a moment. "The Serpents," she explains slowly, "…are a gang, right here on the Southside, and we look out for each other."

"That sounds nice." Startled at the sudden rush of laughter from her, I flip onto my stomach to look at her and hold my fists beneath my chin, positioned just a little lower than her. I realise that I look a little like Rosie, in this position, from how she looked at me in my own bed the first morning that we met.

Moonlight blooms in the dewiness of her skin, and her lips are stretched into a bright smile, all pearly teeth – she really is quite pretty. I slap at her arm lightly to catch her attention. " _What_? What's so funny about that?"

"It's just-…" She trails off, and her smile momentarily wavers into sadness. "Nobody ever says that about the Serpents – nobody ever says  _nice_  when you tell them you're in a gang. My uncle sure didn't say that when I told him. Hoped for better things, apparently. Caused a whole lot more dents in the wall than Sweet Pea ever did, that's for sure."

I want to distract her, so I ask, "Your friend, Sweet Pea – is he another foster-kid, like me and Rosie?"

"Oh, no. He was just in a rough spot. Ruth helped him out. Like I said, Mila – you got lucky."

"I didn't know Ruth took other people in. Outside of the system, I mean."

Bitterly, she replies, "What, you think  _you're_  the only stray in this town?"

I swallow a prickle of hurt, barely hidden behind a weak grin. "No. But I  _am_  the lucky one, right? I get to stay with Ruth and Rosie – for now, anyway."

She drinks in every inch of me, silent and thoughtful. Then she says, "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. So, you asked me about the Serpents. Does that mean I can ask about  _your_  family?"

"Sure," I shrug. "I never really lived with them. I don't know where my Mom is. She was never there – and neither was my Dad. I had my Grandmother, though, but she passed away last year."

"I'm sorry," she whispers sincerely, sinking lower in the blankets to meet my eyes. "Really, Mila, I am."

"It's okay. I didn't live with her either, not really. I had to swap foster-homes a lot, and she could only take care of me partially, had to prove she was capable – so I kind of had to look out for myself, most of the time."

"It's okay," Toni echoes. "You're not a Serpent, but we can still look out for each other now, right? I mean, I'm baring my soul in daisy pyjamas – that has to count for something. We can look out for each other." She holds out her pinkie-finger for a promise, like children, and I link mine around hers with a laugh. I am about to pull away when she holds tighter and looks at me quite seriously. "I mean that, Mila. I really do."

I am struck by the warmth in her smile. Sometimes, children were brought into foster-homes late at night, draped in puffy jackets and puffy tears, and they used to curl in their beds with their shoulders lost in trembles. I used to climb out of mine, used to comfort them and hold them, brush aside matted strands of hair, cradle them, whisper quietly to them that I was there and that I would help them because of it. I look at Toni now, her hand intertwined with mine, and nod. "I mean it, too, Toni."

She chuckles and releases me, settles into her blankets and seems ready to sleep. I shuffle around against the hardness of the floorboards and find a comfortable spot, but Toni suddenly speaks up again and says, "You know, you were pretty cool about this, some random girl coming into your place, spilling her whole heart to you. Kinda weird."

I can still trace the delicate lines of her smile, even in the faint light. I fluff my pillows, collapse against them and huff, "What, you think  _you're_  the only stray in this town?"

She laughs loud, loud enough that there is a distant thump from the bedroom across the hall; we hold deathly still, wondering if we have woken Ruth and if she might stomp in here because of it, but nothing comes apart from my laughter and then hers, blended into breathless wheezes, smothered in the folds of our pillows so that we do not disturb anyone, but our laughter drifts well into the night, and only fizzles out in the first drips of dawn; but by then, there is already the scent of eggs and bacon from downstairs, the crack and sizzle of the pan, and we scramble to eat before Rosie can hog it all.

* * *

vi

While Toni packs her stuff, her phone beeps loudly. I lounge on the bed, stretched out on my stomach with my arms dangling over the edge, face pressed into my mattress, kicking my legs aimlessly. I can admit that I would rather Toni stay a little while longer. I never really had a lot of friends to hang around with in the other homes because I was usually the oldest, or never around long enough to really bother – and nobody really wanted to bother with me, either, because I often had bruised knuckles and a split lip from another fight. I only tagged along behind even older kids at school, tried to be cooler for them, did some stupid stuff just for the fun of it, to make teachers sigh and other kids stare.

I want to forget it, because it embarrasses me, now. Instead, I focus on Toni and watch a small smile blossom on her face once she flicks through her messages, her hand reaching out for her backpack. I wonder if she might hang out with me at school, or if this was just a one-time kind of thing, something she had to put up with just because she had nowhere else to stay. Still, she shrugs on her beanie and looks at me with a smile. "Wanna meet some of my friends?"

I lift my head and blink stupidly at her, surprised that she would even  _want_  me to meet her friends so fast, but Toni seems quite easy-going, leaning against my desk and crossing her arms, as if she can just read my thoughts. She shrugs and adds, "Oh, come  _on_ , Mila. You might as well. You're gonna need friends in a place like Southside High, trust me. One look at you and the Ghoulies would eat you alive."

"The  _what_?"

"Ghoulies," she repeats. "Rivals to the Serpents, full of low-life scum, you know. The usual high school division - just without the jocks and cheerleader cliché. Southside High always tries to go above and beyond in its originality."

"I think I could handle them," I tell her. "I've handled worse."

She looks solemn for a moment, her smile shifting into something a little more regretful, her eyes becoming more distant. "Yeah…" - she ducks her head, looking down at her scuffed boots - "…I bet you have. But hey, we  _did_  make a pinkie-promise last night, and I don't do that corny stuff just for anyone, okay? So, you wanna start this whole looking-out-for-each-other thing or do you tell that to all the stray girls in your bedroom? Whisper sweet nothings about friendship and crappy family stuff just to get them to like you?"

"Depends. Did it work?" I ask, grinning.

She picks up her phone again and taps out a quick message. "I guess so, because I just told my friends you'd be joining."

"Okay. Sure, I'll meet your friends. But like I told you, I'm all out of leather and black lipstick. Heavy metal, too."

"Good thing I'm not a metalhead then," she smirks. "And I'm sure we can tolerate a leather-deficit for one day." She turns to grab her backpack and sling it over her shoulder. I climb off the bed and pause once she holds her hand flat against my chest to make me hold still. "But no – and I mean –  _no_  daisies. Got it?"

I smile brightly at her. "Got it. Sunflowers it is."

* * *

vii

The quarry sits a couple of minutes outside of town; its rings of gravelled slopes, all echoed around a pool of muddy, blackened water, swollen in bubbled clumps of greyish sludge. In the summertime, its rocks glitter against the blistering sunlight, and it induces that hazy, beautiful feeling which comes right before the end of summer, on the cusp of the return to school, before books and homework and all that other stuff comes along. I stand with Toni, looking at a distant group of kids around our age skidding their motorcycles against the gravel in circles, grinding into the dirt and then pulling off in a cacophony of wild revving, like a rattle screeching through the emptiness of the quarry, racing one another around, shrieking with laughter and dipping backward against the wind. Electronic beats blast from speakers poised in the flatbed of a truck, coated in a thick layer of dust from the clouds swirled by the motorcycles – metal gleams from rings and necklaces, studded boots, belts and leather jackets. I glance down at the embroidery sunflower stitched into my white shirt and wonder if I really should have listened a little more.

Toni has her arms crossed, hip cocked. She bumps my shoulder with hers and says lowly, "Look a little more like you know what you're doing, and you should be fine. Right now, I'm thinking the Serpents are more likely to eat you alive than the Ghoulies."

I scoff. "They can  _try_. I'll do just fine, Toni."

She smirks. " _Prove it_."

I follow her stare, which turns from me and lands on the group of Serpents. I count them out – twelve of them, scattered in little groups, three boys on their motorcycles with another three standing nearby. A couple of feet away, a mix of five girls and another boy sit, sipping at drinks and drinking in the sunlight. Momentarily, the engines cut off and Toni takes the opportunity to let out a loud whistle, drawing all of those eyes toward her – toward  _us_.

"Serpents, meet Mila," she announces. "Mila – the Serpents."

"Uh, hi," I mumble weakly, feeling a little out of place. The others nod in their own way, then return to their conversations.

Inwardly, I think about an older Mila, who would have tried to be more aloof and cool, slouched and pouted about all this stuff. I used to slink into parties with older kids I hardly even knew. I swallow hard, thinking about it. I don't want that anymore – and maybe that comes across more easily than I realise, because two of the boys stood near the motorcycles drift toward us, climbing upward against a slope and standing in front of us.

I notice the height of one of them more than the other, mostly because he is incredibly tall and broad. He stands with his arms crossed, mimicking Toni, smiling at her. She nods at him, and then looks toward the other boy, who has his hands in his pockets, his spiked hair short and gelled. I feel a nervous prickle of anxiety once the first boy looks me over, as if  _assessing_  me, before he lands on the sunflower and his lips seem to twitch.

Toni has this little smile of her own, like she realises what he might be thinking. She decides to spare me, because she quickly sidles in and says, "Hey, Mila. Remember I told you about Sweet Pea? Well, this is him. Sweet Pea, Mila. And this…" - she nods toward the other boy – "… is Fangs."

I smile at both of them, still blushing more than I would like. I think Sweet Pea has a cute smile, and his eyes are dark, observant. He smirks even more and tilts his head at Toni. "Talking about me at your little girly sleepover, Topaz? I'm touched."

"Touched in the head, sure," she replies with a snort. He reaches for her playfully, but she pulls back, grinning at him. "Quit it, jerk. Listen, Mila is going to be attending Southside High with us."

Fangs whistles lowly. "Great choice. Did you know that 99% of Southside High students find work within their first year out of high-school? At the prison, making mattresses."

Sweet Pea thumps him hard on the shoulder, but he still laughs at him, grabbing him and pulling him closer to wrestle with him.

Toni rolls her eyes. "Don't listen to him, Mila. Like I said, Southside goes above and beyond-…"

"Yeah, above and beyond the average dropout rate," Sweet Pea interrupts.

Toni tries to hold in a smile, her mouth pressing into a thin line, but she lets out a laugh and her arms loosen, one looping around mine. " _And_ ," she draws out, casting a direct glare at Sweet Pea before she looks back at me, "…you will be  _totally_  fine.  _Right_ , guys?"

Fangs nods with the same casual, easy attitude which Toni seems to share. Sweet Pea straightens, pushing Fangs off him and grinning at me, making me blush even more. "Yeah," he says. "You'll be totally fine. Scout's honour."

"You got kicked out of the Scouts on your first day," Fangs states flatly.

Sweet Pea's smile drops, looking at Fangs with a deadpan stare. Fangs doesn't seem to catch on until Sweet Pea thumps him again, and the usual punching and shoving comes back with force, but there is an odd sort of affection behind it; they wrestle more like brothers, never really attempting to hurt, but just for the fun of scuffing the dirt and messing around. Toni watches them fondly and then squeezes my arm, pushing away from me to follow after them. She turns around, walking backwards and says, "Consider yourself officially welcomed to the Southside, Mila."


	3. chapter three

 

* * *

_chapter three: violent youth_

* * *

Fresh cherries slip from a mountain of frothy, strawberry foam. Sprinkles melt into chocolate drizzled around a mountain of mint ice-cream, topped with a chocolate flake – a gift from Ruth before I start at Southside High tomorrow. Ruth had written about this place in her files, about its chocolate sundaes being the best you could ever eat. She had not been wrong, either. Rosie plunges her spoon into the pile of sugary goodness and gulps mouthfuls with her cheeks coated in rosy splotches, her small hands stained in chocolate. Ruth snatches a napkin from a dispenser and dampens it with her spit, attempting to scrub off these marks all over Rosie, who quickly tries to swallow more chocolate before the napkin can come between her and the spoon.

I pluck off a cherry from my milkshake and plop it into my mouth, chewing while I glance around at the diner, drinking in its neon lights and cosy booths, filled with a bunch of Northside students huddled around sundaes. I notice that a couple of them glance at us – but nothing more than that, thankfully. I look at their jackets printed with BULLDOGS and then, automatically, I think of jackets printed with SERPENTS instead.

Yesterday, I had spent a warm evening stretched out in the quarry with Toni, Fangs and Sweet Pea, alongside a couple of other Serpents. I think of Sweet Pea and blush, because I had spent even more time thinking about him afterward, once he had offered to walk with me and Toni through the streets of the Southside. It had been a quiet, peaceful little stroll through neighbourhoods, crossing the emptiness of lots which had been left unfilled, half-built.

Toni and Sweet Pea had stood in front of my house for a little while, then slinked off toward some other place, scuffing at cracked pavements. I called out and thanked them. Sweet Pea turned and shouted back,  _can't let the new stray walk by herself, can we?_

I look at those BULLDOGS jackets, and dream of SERPENTS instead.

* * *

ii

Slumped in her car-seat, her chin lolling against her chest and her chocolate-stained lips held slightly apart, Rosie rocks with the gentle bumps of the car and dreams, too. I had carried her out, buckled her into her chair and sat alongside her, her small hand still clasped around mine even while she sleeps. I look outward at the houses of the Northside which flash in brief glimpses of white, wooden beams and muted, pastel colours. Rosie shifts around and holds my hand a little more tightly, mumbling softly in her sleep. Then the bridge comes, and the Southside swallows us in its saturated orange light.

* * *

iii

Stood in the parking lot, I look through clouds of dense fog and glimpse Southside High held between its folds; made of concrete barriers, odd chains linked around blocked fire-exits, windowpanes painted tags which scream DEATH and HATRED in chunky, bubbled letters, it appears that there is no pastel here, no sprinklers and no cutesy signs, not in the Southside. There are only neon and odd stains, only blackened droplets of an unknown liquid spat from splintered pipes, only a cluster of needles half-buried beneath dumpsters. I spot a bunch of students stood in the cloak of a darkened corner, a handful of weird sherbet sticks in their hands. I think if Southside has a uniform, it must be leather and thin chains linked from the waistline of black pants, each jacket stitched with gang-names, adorned with either skulls or snakes.

I stand in my green jacket and belong to neither.

Fleshed out in gaunt cheekbones and green eyes, one boy stares at me with little discretion, then takes a step forward. He smiles, and I realise that most of his teeth are rotted, his chapped lips peel inward, and it reminds me of a corpse. I wince. His smile widens. Before he can really approach, a hand clamps onto my arm. I jump but relax once I find Toni with that familiar smile of her. The boy looks between us, then retreats into his hovel, like some horrid little creature. Toni follows my gaze and lets out a laugh.

"The Ghoulies work fast for a Monday." She grins at me. "Good thing I just work faster, huh?"

Inside, Toni shrugs off her jacket, pulls off her belt and hops around to tear off her boots. She pushes at my shoulder to make me follow her lead, because I was too busy staring at the large, looming metal detectors which the students pass through, with just the occasional beep and the pat of gloves hands against leather blended into the loud noise of students talking amongst one another. Toni throws her backpack into a tray, reaches for the clasp of her necklaces and pushes me again with another snort.

Dumbly, I pull off my jacket too, fumble with my belt and boots, like her. Toni glances behind me and points at Sweet Pea and Fangs who stand on the other side of this makeshift pat-down, watching us with their arms crossed, leaned against a wall – " _the greatest people you will ever meet"_  – she points at the gang behind us with skulls on their jackets – " _and the worst – beware the Ghoulies_ ".

I step through the metal detector, looking behind at her. " _Mean Girls_ , Toni? Really?"

"Hey, the Southside used to have this stellar rental place before, back when that was still a thing. Then the place got burned down. Apparently, some guy got fined for not bringing back a DVD and well-…nobody takes kindly to that sort of thing around here. Guy burned that place down. When they arrested him, he said, ' _well, at least I don't have to pay that fine anymore'_. Dumbass."

On the other side, I reach for my belt, but a gruff, older man stops me and taps his baton against my arms, forcing me to lift them and allow him to pat me down. "Knives?" he asks.

"What? Oh, n-no-…" I mumble.

"Move along," he orders, giving me a small push.

Toni grabs my stuff and shoves them into my arms, smiling at my confusion and guiding me toward the boys. She puts her arm around my shoulder and pulls me against her while she leads us toward a classroom. I look around and say, "Wait, don't I need to register or something? Talk to the principal or the receptionist or-…"

"No receptionist here," Sweet Pea cuts off smoothly. "And the principal got arrested last week." He looks down at me and smirks. "So, no, you don't."

I nod weakly. Toni squeezes my arm. "Welcome to Southside High, Mila."

* * *

iv

Toni had not been joking about the Ghoulies; she forms a blockade around me, pushes Sweet Pea to my left and Fangs to the right, while she sits in front, and I notice the segregation which splits the students into little cliques formed more on gang affiliation than extracurricular clubs, like in most other schools. There are no jocks that I can see, no cheerleaders with pom-poms and definitely no nerdy kids, nothing like that. There is just the Ghoulies on one side, the Serpents on the other, and a couple of stragglers in between, mercilessly picked apart by the others. I wonder what would have happened to me if I had never met Toni. I scratch down the equations which the teacher writes out on the board, then reach for an eraser for a splotched mistake. I feel the prickle of a stare and look at Sweet Pea. He turns away, jaw set.

Behind him, the Ghoulies tilt backward in their chairs and stare at me, too. Nobody else writes anything, nobody has notepads. Suddenly, I think of those Northsiders and feel a little uneasy. Then, class ends with a weak, tinny rattle from a bell which barely works.

I stand and prepare to pack away my stuff when a Ghoulie plucks my pencil-case from the table and turns it upside down, so that all of my pencils pour out. I rush to grab them, but he stomps his boot on a couple of stray pencils which had rolled closer to him. He grins at me and leans close, close enough that it makes me lean away from him in disgust. He says, "You wanna learn some stuff? I can teach you."

"I'd rather drop out first," I reply quickly.

His grin widens, and he croons, "Oh,  _baby_ -…"

"Get lost." I glance behind me, forced to then look upward at Sweet Pea who looms behind me, equally supported by Fangs. Toni, shorter and much smaller, still stands right between them, arms crossed. Sweet Pea looks quite intense, mouth drawn into a scowl and his fists clenched. I notice a glint of metal and realise Fangs has some knuckle-rings. I swallow hard, filled with anxiety. I cannot be in a fight, not like this. A black-eye or bruises would never settle with a social-worker, no matter what I tell them.

"You heard him," Toni says. " _Get lost_. She's with us."

There is a moment of tension in which the other Ghoulies watch from afar, like vultures with beady stares and greedy mouths stretched wide. Then, on the other side, the Serpents watch too, slowly approaching. The Ghoulie glances around the classroom and his grin dips into a weaker smile, his hands held in surrender as he slinks backward. "Okay, okay. See you later,  _baby_."

The classroom deflates, seemingly disappointed. The other groups depart in slow trickles, out into the halls. I turn around and say, "Thanks, guys."

"Don't write stuff anymore," Sweet Pea states flatly, completely ignoring what I said. He doesn't even  _look_  at me, he glares at the Ghoulie, who walks off with his pals.

I blink at him, confused. "What?"

" _Don't write stuff anymore_ ," he repeats, far more harshly, finally turning his glare toward me, instead. "You put a target on your back – sucking up like that-…"

"Sucking up?  _Sucking up_? Are you serious? We're in  _class_ , Sweet Pea, we're  _supposed_  to write stuff down-…"

"Yeah, well, next time, you can tell him that," he replies darkly before he storms out. Fangs glances at me as he passes and bumps my shoulder lightly with a sympathetic expression, following right behind Sweet Pea. I look at Toni incredulously. She shrugs and bends down to help me gather my stuff. Bent close together, she whispers, "Maybe you should listen to him -  _baby_."

Without the Ghoulie here, the word seems much funnier than it had been when he had said it, and we burst into laughter. "And he didn't even see me in my daisy pyjamas before he called me that," I tell her.

Somehow, that makes us laugh even more, and we fall against the scuffed linoleum of the classroom, giggling until that withered bell makes its tinny rattle all over again.

* * *

v

At lunch, I pointedly ignore Sweet Pea, unsettled by his outburst. He has been pretty – well, like his nickname might suggest -  _sweet_  up until this point. Now, he sits at our bench and scowls. Toni chews at an apple and chats with another Serpent girl, Mags. I take small bites out of the sandwiches which Ruth had made for me and mull over the whole Ghoulie thing, thinking about all the things those Northsiders had said on top of it; that nobody learns anything at the Southside, that I should never have even bought my notebooks in the first place. I think of Sweet Pea and his reaction and wonder if they had been right, but I have never attended a school where I wasn't expected to write stuff down and –  _learn_ , I guess.

Toni taps at my shoulder and motions for me to follow her and Mags, so I stuff my sandwiches into my lunchbox and stand. Sweet Pea surprises me once he stands too, and says, "Mila, wait, can we talk for a second?"

I look at Toni, whose expression is carefully blank, but she still shrugs at me. "We'll wait for you by the doors, okay?"

I nod and slide back into my seat, watching Sweet Pea do the same. He seems agitated, his shoulders drawn and his leg bouncing. "Look," he starts. "I lost my cool with you, all right? It's just-…Doing that stuff in this place, it really does put a target on your back and a Ghoulie would never care about jumping you for-…"

"For what?" I interrupt once he flounders. "For writing down a math question?"

" _Yeah_ ," he replies heatedly, his fists lightly thumping the table between us. "Look, I get that you're new around here, Mila, but I  _know_  Toni told you about the Ghoulies. You're not a Serpent, but you're hanging around us and that means it's the  _Serpents_  risking their asses so that  _you_  don't get into trouble with the Ghoulies. Toni is your friend, sure. But she's our friend, too. She's putting herself on the line, which means we're putting ourselves on that same line, all right? I'm looking out for my friends. That's it."

I snort. "There are a lot of lines in your explanation, Sweet Pea, but I think I get it. I won't write stuff down. I'll avoid the Ghoulies." He nods, seemingly satisfied, but I quickly add, "Just don't be such an asshole about it next time."

Sweet Pea looks at me, surprised. "What?"

"You were being an asshole. You could have just explained yourself like this.  _Calmly_. I would have understood you better."

His shoulders loosen, as if the tension drops from him through the small laugh he lets out. "Okay. I was a bit of a jerk, I get it-…"

"Asshole. Not jerk."

" _All right_ ," he concedes. "An asshole, I get it. Look, Mila, I'm sorry. Really. How about you come to the Whyte Wyrm tonight? It's this bar we all hang out at. Toni's working there, you can meet more of the Serpents, and I'll get you a drink to make up for being an asshole."

"Make it three drinks, and I'll ask Ruth."

" _Three drinks_?" he repeats, mouth dropping, but he catches my deadpan stare and rolls his eyes. "Fine, fine.  _Three_."

* * *

vi

In the girls' bathroom, between cigarette-butts and two broken needles, I tell Toni about what Sweet Pea had just said while she applies her dusty pink lipstick through a cracked mirror. We can hear Mags in the stall, fixing her tights. Toni glances at me occasionally between each layer, then smirks. "Sounds like Sweet Pea was eager to make it up to you," she says.

I blush and scoff at her. "He just felt bad for being-…"

"For being Sweet Pea," she interrupts. "But I never see him apologising to  _Fangs_  that quickly, you know."

Echoing from the stall, Mags calls out, "Yeah, but Fangs isn't a pretty girl, and he definitely doesn't have breas-…"

"Okay, Mags, I think she gets it," Toni cuts off quickly, rolling her eyes. She turns toward me, smiling softly. "All we're saying is that Sweet Pea doesn't usually  _do_  apologies. At least, not so fast, anyway. He's more of a 'punch-or-glare' kind of guy. So, my advice? Take his apology and run with it, Mila."

"Yeah, run with it," Mags says, finally unlocking the stall and stepping out. "Sweet Pea can be difficult, but he can also be so  _cute_. I mean, have you even _seen_  him without his jacket – those  _biceps_ -…"

I follow the girls out of the bathroom, blushing even more.

* * *

vii

Ruth had been a little reluctant when I had first spoken to her about hanging out with Toni and the others after school, having borrowed a phone from Toni. She eventually caved on the promise of a curfew and that somebody take me home before the curfew itself, obviously, which Sweet Pea said he could do – and I had to ignore the looks which Mags and Toni had given me at that, smirking, making me want to dip beneath our table. Ruth does not want to restrict me, I know that, but I think she worries. Even though she knows Toni pretty well, and she seems to trust her, she had hung up with this odd, distant tone in her voice which was hard to place. I call it concern, but I think it is something more than that. I didn't mention the bar, and it nags at me just a little. It must appear on my face, because Toni bumps my shoulder and I smile weakly at her.

I forget about it once Fangs starts talking about the pool table and brags about how much he has beat the other Serpents, arguing with Sweet Pea about old games. I forget about all that other stuff, because I have never really laughed so much – not recently, anyway, and Toni catches my eye somewhere between these little squabbles and grins at me, like she knows it. Like she  _understand_ s it.

* * *

viii

Clouds of cigarette-smoke curl around the entrance to the Whyte Wyrm, shrouded in a yellow haze seeping from its lights, pooling into the parking lot filled with motorcycles and trucks. I trail behind the others, more than a little nervous because I have never really been in bars that much. House parties? Sure. I snuck into a couple back when I tried to impress older kids, but never bars. Stepping into its musty, smoky interior, I notice a few Serpents who had been at the quarry, surprised that they lift their drinks and salute me in acknowledgement. I smile back at them and follow after Toni, who sidles behind the bar with evident familiarity, pouring out some sodas. I take the soda which she offers me, glad that none of the others grab alcohol or anything like that.

"Mila," Sweet Pea calls out, tearing me from my thoughts. "Wanna play a game with us?"

I nod, slipping off my seat and taking a cue stick from him. The atmosphere is much calmer than I had expected, just a couple of teenagers stood around talking, laughing. I suppose it is a little early in the evening, too early for much messing around. Soft tunes croon from a radio, a gentle blanket of sound which cocoons us in this bar. I hardly notice the time pass until Sweet Pea taps my shoulder and says, "We gotta get going, Mila. Curfew, remember?"

"Huh, I only remember getting one drink," I grin at him. "Where's the other two that you promised me?"

He shrugs and smiles. "Guess that means you just gotta come back here again."

* * *

ix

I feel a swell of warmth where Sweet Pea had touched my shoulder, even if it was just a tap, and inwardly scold myself for being so silly about this little crush. I have never really had a crush before either. It is even more awkward than I thought it would be, especially when Toni smirks and nods at me on our way out. Fangs and another two Serpents come along with us – Birdie and Max, they introduce themselves. Brothers from the Southside and both proudly boasting Serpent tattoos on the centre of their throats, like the one which Sweet Pea has on the left side of his throat. While we walk, I think about Ruth and how she would react if she knew I had been in the Whyte Wyrm.

Sweet Pea walks alongside me, the other boys just ahead of us. "Are you thinking about Ruth?" he asks suddenly.

Surprised, I look up at him. "Yeah, actually."

He nods. "I guessed as much. You're worried she'd freak out if she knew you were at a bar, right? At the Whyte Wyrm especially, of all places?"

I hear his annoyance bleeding through – and maybe a little bit of hurt along with it. She considers them family. I suppose Sweet Pea must, too. He had been so defensive of them at lunch, when he thought I might bring them trouble just for being around them. I remember what Toni had said the first night I had met her, when I had told her it was nice she had the Serpents.  _Nobody ever says 'nice' when you tell them you're in a gang._

"I'm glad you look out for your friends, Sweet Pea," I tell him. He blinks at me, perhaps confused by the turn in conversation. We turn into an alleyway, a shortcut which leads out into another street, the other boys still ahead of us. I continue, "Today, I mean – you were just looking out for your friends. I get it. So, I don't care that you're a Serpent. Ruth obviously doesn't either, because she let you and Toni stay with her before. I know that. I'm guessing that means she knows all about Serpents and it doesn't change what she thinks of any of you, either. I'm just worried that-…Well, I don't know, I didn't tell Ruth, but if my  _social-worker_  finds out stuff like this, they'll…"

"Take you away from Ruth," he finishes, because I couldn't say it aloud.

I nod, smiling bitterly. "Yeah. And I really like it here. I like Ruth. I like Rosie, the other kid staying with us. I like all of it more than I ever liked anywhere else I've stayed."

"A social-worker can't take you from a place just because you hung out with some friends, Mila, even if it was at a bar," he mutters.

"No, but they can if they…If-…"

"If they think you're hanging out with some  _gang_ ," Sweet Pea states flatly. He scoffs and looks away from me, his jaw set in a grind before his eyes widen and he reaches out to grip my arm.

Startled, I follow his stare and feel my stomach drop at the sight of sirens flashing, flickers of blue which flood the alleyway, cut through with slices of bright red. Fangs and the other boys turn quickly, because the police officers climb out of their vehicles in a wild scramble. I can tell by the look on the boys' faces that they do not want to be caught – not just because they do not want to be arrested, but because there is a flash of  _fear_  in them, real fear, which spikes a similar feeling in me and I grasp at Sweet Pea and blurt, "I can't be caught by  _them_ , Sweet Pea, not now, this is what I meant-…"

I think that even if we had not been talking like we had just before, he would have understood, because he nods and turns, pulling me with him. I push my legs as fast as I can, trying to keep up with Sweet Pea who has much longer strides, bursting from the alleyway and bolting along the street we had just come from, breathing in heavy gasps. I manage to ask, "W-What do they want? We didn't  _do_  anything-…"

"Doesn't matter," he shouts, pulling my arm harder. "They're from the Northside! Come  _on_!"

I hear a thump and glance behind, slowing at the sight of Fangs, thrown against the concrete and patted down by an officer. Birdie and Max, the other boys, are already caught, hauled back toward the alleyway. Sweet Pea looks behind too, his face ashen and distraught, dotted in beads of sweat. He looks at his friends and there is so much hurt in his eyes. It almost looks as if he might go back, but then he looks down at me again and continues to pull us onward.

He turns us onto another street and glimpses a laundromat just ahead. He pulls me into it, the bell tinkling, but the place is almost completely empty apart from one older lady who glances up at us and quickly looks anyway – nobody would make much of a fuss of staring, not on the Southside, it seems. Sweet Pea pushes me toward one of the benches and says, "Stay in here. Wait ten minutes, and then run right back to Ruth's."

"Sweet Pea," I hiss, trying to pull him back.

"They'll sweep this whole street if they think we're hiding in a store, but they'll keep chasing if they see me running, all right?" he hisses. "I know them better than you do, Mila. They want Serpent blood. So, just trust me, okay? They want  _Serpents_ , Mila. Not you. Stay here."

He peels me off him, slipping out of the laundromat. I hear a shout and watch him run as fast as he can away from this place, away from the chug of the washing machines and the rattle of the dryers, drowned out in the thump of blood gushing around my skull and the dryness of my mouth. Blurred uniforms chase after him, and I collapse against the wooden bench held between the machines and feel as if my stomach flips around like the wet clothes in each machine, thrown in violent waves until the whole room spins.

In the crashing sounds which swirls in my eardrums, I barely hear the older lady behind me, who scoops her basket into her arms and says, "Get home safe, honey."

* * *

x

Stepping into the hall of the house, I close the front-door behind me and lean against it, closing my eyes and taking deep, slow breaths. I am half-an-hour earlier than my curfew. I had sprinted through streets and only slowed once I could see the familiar houses of our neighbourhood with its bent fences and crushed mailboxes. I shrug off my jacket and smooth my hair. I do not hear the usual laughter from Rosie when she watches her favourite cartoons in the evening, but I do hear murmured voices from the living-room, the clink of teacups and then I hold still, confused. I push forward and open the living-room door, finding Ruth sitting on the couch. I look across the room and find an unfamiliar woman sitting in the armchair where I usually sit with Rosie when she wants to read stories. The woman stands and holds out her hand.

"Hi there, Mila. I'm your new social-worker. Maybe we should have a little chat."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone who has reviewed, favourited, etc...thanks for the great response! It makes me so happy, you have no idea. I also hope I'm writing Sweet Pea well, he is much harder to get down - I know he's a hot-head, but I think there's a lot more behind him than that. Also, the latter part of this chapter will be explained sooner and might have more to do with Alice Cooper after a throwaway line from an episode (I know that makes little sense now, but should do soon). So, here goes!


	4. chapter four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was wondering if I'm making Sweet Pea too nice, but then I remembered how he initially tries to be nice to Jughead but is really only a little rude once Jughead rejects the Serpents' help otherwise. So, for me, SP is nice - until the Serpents aren't been treated as nicely and then he is quick to anger. I hope my interpretation is okay. Jughead makes an appearance. He's weird. A total weirdo, Betty. A weird guy.

**_chapter four: empathy_ **

* * *

 

Her name is Helena, this new social-worker. She sips delicately at the tea which Ruth has placed before her and smiles frequently, often with a lot more warmth than any of my other social-workers who came before her. I perch upon an armchair, hands clasped. Although I maintain a cool, blank stare, my heart thumps in sporadic flutters against a ribcage which seems as if it curls inward like melted candle-wax, dripping onto organs which already slip around between swirls of anxiety because I am not sure just what she _knows_. I hear a faint patter and realise that it is raining. Some distant part of me worries that Sweet Pea is still out there, running through streets with skin soaked, blurred figures chasing right behind him, clutching batons and hatred for the Southside pushing each pounding footstep. I swallow uncomfortably, looking away from Helena and toward a fluffy teddy slumped against the coffee-table instead, its stitched smile and coal eyeballs. I think of Rosie upstairs and what Ruth might tell her if I am taken away – it could be _tonight_ , for all I know.

Helena smooths out her dowdy skirt, a dull green blend of coarse material, all dense folds which just about brush her pinkly ankles, her large feet contained in brown-leather loafers. Her hair, straw-like and blonde, is so light in colour that it seems like white fluff, clotted around her puffy face like clouds, draining her skin of colour. She is not that old, but her clothes seem to swallow her, skin etched in gentle lines which pool from her nostrils and crinkle around her smile. She speaks in low, breathy tones, a little hoarse like me, but it fills the living-room with muted authority. She asks about school, about friends – I do not tell her that my newest friends are in cells, somewhere, probably. Serpent blood, Sweet Pea had said. _Not you_.

“I think monthly visits might be best,” she continues. I let out a slow sigh, realising she is not here because of what happened. Just pure chance. Pure, unlucky chance. “Perhaps fortnightly if necessary, but Ruth hasn’t reported any difficulties. Anything you might like to add, Mila?”

Drawn from distant thoughts of Sweet Pea bathed in the acid colours of the laundromat, his scrunched shoulders, hands contorted into fists, I look directly at Helena and smile. I bite the fleshy inner-part of my lips until it stings; there is a swell of copper, a tangy spread of blood against the tongue, but I smile and smile through it. “No, nothing at all.”

ii

Slumped against my armchair, scrubbing tiredly at my face while I hear Ruth and Helena murmuring in the hall, I mull over the last couple of hours and think about contacting Toni somehow. I am still without a phone, mostly because I had never gotten one before in the other homes and I had not thought about asking for one until now. There had never really been anybody to contact and, in this last year, I have tried to follow each curfew with such strictness that I was never out late, never in such a position that my foster-parents could _not_ find me if they needed me suddenly.

Now, I want to hear Sweet Pea speak, hear him to ensure that he _can_ still speak, that he still has Serpent blood in him, that he is not collapsed in an alleyway somewhere, injured – that he is not _scared._ I had seen fear seep through the other boys’ faces once that car had pulled into the alleyway, seen it splashed against them in flashes of red-and-blue, seen it bleed into the concrete beneath them once pressed against it, held there, contained.

I hear a thump in the kitchen and jump in fright. I stand, wondering if Rosie has awoken and heard us speaking, if she might be curious and creeping around with that usual nosiness – only a shadowy silhouette pools against the wallpaper and I let out a muffled shriek, hands clamping against my mouth to hold it in, but then a hand lands on my shoulder and I spin around to find Ruth there, looking weirdly _remorseful_.  

“Ruth?” I ask warily.

She sighs and looks behind me. “You can come out now, Jug.”

Hunched shoulders, a lopsided beanie – the kid comes out with hands stuffed into his pockets, awkward, one corner of his mouth falling just a little too much to achieve more than a muscle-spasm of a smile while he takes out a hand to allow a quick wave. “Uh, hey, Mila. I’m Jughead. Ruth is letting me stay…”

I narrow in on his nervous swallow, the quick flicker of his eyes toward the wallpaper. “For how long?” I ask.

“Uh, well, the thing is-…” he mumbles.

“I let him forge my signature on some files,” Ruth states suddenly. I spin toward her, eyes wide. Hastily, she adds, “Jug is in a little bit of trouble, Mila – or a lot of it, and he could be taken in the system permanently, but if he has some documents _under the table_ …Well, the Serpents take care of the rest, and we can-…”

“Are you _crazy_?” I hiss. “He’s _pretending_ to live here? What if they-…You know, _check_ -…I mean, how are you supposed to get away with that?”

“All Jughead needs is an address and a temporary placement,” Ruth replies carefully, eyeing my response. “Just a couple of documents-…”

“Forged,” I interrupt. “Not real. Is that why he was hiding in the kitchen from Helena?”

“I told you, the Serpents take care of it. He has another person listed as his social-worker, he just needed a family to-…”

“And if he gets caught – if _you_ get caught – then Rosie and I don’t have a family,” I state, my voice cracking in its usual hoarseness. Ruth flounders, mouth still moving as if there is sound, but nothing more ever comes, a silent film of sorts. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the awkward scuff of Jughead’s boots.

Quietly, he speaks up and says, “I could find somewhere else, Ruth, really-…”

“No. No, you can’t. You need somewhere _safe_ , Jug, and you’re safe _here_. I’ll get you some blankets, you can take my bed if you need-…”

“Or mine. Hell, have Rosie’s, too,” I tell him bitterly. “Take the whole damn place, _Jughead_. I won’t need it once Helena comes around and catches you here next time.” I move toward the hall, shrugging off Ruth’s hand on my wrist. “I better get _packing_.”

Storming into my bedroom, I flop onto the bed and scrunch my hair in my hands, pulling just a little to alleviate the stress. After that, I feel like a child, scolded and ashamed. I sit at the end of my bed, deathly still. I hear Jughead and Ruth shuffling around downstairs, their quiet whispers, and then I look at the dent in my wall, put there by Sweet Pea, sometime long ago, before I had ever even come here and met him, met Toni. Met Ruth and Rosie. It is hard not to punch and kick and scream, like I used to do, sometime long ago. Then the tears peel from me in hot, prickly droplets, just from staring at that dent, made sometime long ago.

iii

Tuesday comes in a trickle of greyish sunlight slipping through little dots in the clouds and coating the parking lot of Southside High in its drab colour. Jughead stands with me, a leather jacket around him, still clutching at a backpack with a loose grip. He had tried to talk at breakfast, much like Ruth had. I had been silent and only responded if it was Rosie asking something, but her curious gaze had darted between all of us, her mouth fixed in a confused pout. I look around for Sweet Pea, pushing away from Jughead and letting him trail behind me. I hear him let out a long sigh and mumble, “Ruth said this would be a little hard, but I thought-…”

“Because you must know Ruth _so well_ ,” I mutter, standing on my tippy-toes to look across the sea of chains and black leather for just a glimpse of Sweet Pea – although he is pretty tall, so I suppose he would be easy enough to spot.

“Look, Mila, it was my Dad who suggested this, all right, he brought me over from the Northside and told me-…”

“Oh, Northside? Even better.”

He draws in a sharp breath and blows out his lips in a raspberry, rolling his eyes. “Right. Evil Northsider. I was _just_ about to tell you how I strangle cute little bunny-rabbits in my spare time, and I just _love_ to kick over kids’ sandcastles at the beach, and I _always_ push old ladies over for the fun of it-…”

“You’re annoying.”

“Ah, yes, my worst crime of all - _being annoying_. May I be punished for this cruel, unforgiveable-…”

“Really, _really_ annoying,” I contend, pushing through the crowd of students toward the front and quickly ripping off my belt, backpack, earrings, tossing them into a tray. I glance behind, noting the surprise on Jughead’s face once he drinks in the metal-detectors and dumbly fumbles with his bag. Toni appears, sidling between us and pulling out her phone, snapping a shot of Jughead. I continue forward without them, because Toni approaches him and seems a little familiar with him, somehow.

 _Good_ , I think, _you can deal with him_.

I march toward our makeshift homeroom, because it is really just a bunch of the Serpents and Ghoulies scattered around in chairs and sitting on tables, with a teacher collapsed in a chair and tearing out tufts of hair in frustration. I spot the door of the homeroom and almost make it before a hand latches around my arm and swings me toward a small, adjacent hallway. I stumble and bump against the lockers, looking up at Sweet Pea. I blink at him, looking for bruises or cuts, but he seems – well, _fine_.

“You’re all right,” I blurt out.

He shrugs. “Yeah. I’m all right. What about you?”

“What about _me_?” I repeat, a little dazed. “I’m all right because of _you_ , Sweet Pea, you risked yourself for me and-…”

“I just run faster,” he interrupts lightly, his smile widening. “Longer striders. You’re pretty short, you know.”

“You’re joking about this? Sweet Pea, I thought you were _hurt_ -…” I slap at his chest and his expression scrunches into a tight wince. Startled, I pull my hand away instantly, but step closer to him, lifting my hand toward him. “Sweet Pea – _are you hurt_?”

“It’s nothing,” he mumbles, but his mouth is still held in a tight grimace, his body hunched forward to curl around his ribcage. I don’t think he realises his posture, how much it reveals, nor does he realise the pain which swallows his expression. “Bad fall after one of them caught me, threw me down a little. Nothing I never got before, Mila.”

“They can’t do that,” I babble frantically. “You’re hurt, we gotta take you to a hospital and report this, you-…”

“You never seem to remember that this is the Southside,” he interrupts, again. “You think I _want_ to sit all night in a hospital – which is on the Northside, by the way – on a damn gurney, watching every other Northsider with a _paper-cut_ get checked ahead of me? No, thanks. Give it a couple of days, and I’ll be fine. You should see Birdie. Guy got a real punch for talking smack to an officer.”

“But we never did anything,” I reply hotly. I become aware of his hand around my wrist, all of sudden, my skin flushing in warmth. He had grabbed it when I reached out to check his ribcage, and he holds it now, as if he has forgotten about it. I stress, “ _You_ never did anything, Sweet Pea.”

He stares at me for a moment and then swallows, looking down the hall at all of the other students passing by in flits of colour, blues and blacks and murky purples, the dark colours of Southside High. “There was a car robbed on the Northside. Found crashed out by the bridge. It wasn’t any of us, and from what I can tell, the Ghoulies didn’t even do it, for once. Might have been some kids from Northside High having their own little fun, but what does it matter anyway, when you can kick around some Southside kids and close the case, huh?”

“They can’t do that,” I repeat weakly, quietly. It echoes between us, lost in the thump of shoes and that tinny bell warbling its old song. Sweet Pea looms over me and releases my wrist. I add, “They shouldn’t be _able_ to do that.”

“I know,” he says.

“It’s wrong.”

“I know,” he says.

“I thought you were really hurt.”

Surprise flits through him, lost in the swirl of his stare which melts into the soft regret of his smile. “Yeah. I’m sorry. Couldn’t really do anything to tell you I was okay – short of sending smoke signals or a pigeon to you, you know. You gotta get a phone, Mila.”

“I’ll put it on the Christmas list,” I snort.

He smiles, too, but it falls too soon. Instead, he straightens up despite the pain, filling with rage. “I’m gonna find the Northsiders who stole the car in the first place.”

“And do _what_?” I ask warily.

 “Have you seen Birdie’s face after last night, the guy can barely _blink_ -…”

“And do _what,_ Sweet Pea?” I repeat.

“What has to be done,” he replies in a burst of anger, glaring down at me. “You said it yourself, Mila, we didn’t _do_ anything-…”

There is a sudden cough from beside us. We look away from one another and I find Jughead there, awkward as always.. “Uh, sorry. I just-…I thought I had to talk to the principal or the receptionist, maybe-…”

Sweet Pea looks down at me, raising an eyebrow. Our argument has seemingly been forgotten, because he smirks and looks back at Jughead. “No receptionist here.”

“And the principal got arrested last week,” I add, smiling.

Jughead is understandably confused, not only because of what we have told him, but because of the fact that I am smiling at him instead of ripping his head off – but the smile is more for Sweet Pea, who pushes my shoulder lightly to nudge me toward Jughead and the homeroom.

Once I walk alongside them both, I look at Jughead and say, “I was kidding about you getting my bed, by the way. You’re sticking with that couch.”

“My already-bad posture thanks you more than ever for that, Mila,” he mutters, slipping into his seat. “Oh, scoliosis, my new friend-…”

I watch him pull out a notepad and look at Sweet Pea who sits on the table in front of mine, turned toward us. He returns my look but says nothing. I don’t write anything and try to soak in everything that Mr Phillips tells us instead, but I am distracted by Sweet Pea, distracted by Ruth, distracted by all of it. I imagine Helena knocking one night, finding Jughead with us – I could pass him off as a friend, just visiting, but she might investigate further. I think of Rosie, torn from me, wailing. She has a soft heart, she cries when she thinks Spot and Sunny, her little fishes, are sad. She cries over the mice in _Cinderella_ for some reason. The only problem is that, sometimes, I think my heart is just as soft because I catch myself wanting to cry along with her over all this silly stuff.

I cried over Sweet Pea, and he sits here now, right in front of me. Then his phone buzzes. He looks at it, flushing in a familiar rush of anger. I watch him curse and leap from his seat, storming out. I turn toward Toni, who shrugs and turns away. I wonder just what she knows, because her eyes glance at the door every couple of seconds, and she chews at her pencil, unaware of how she taps her fingertips against the table in a slow rhythm, a little dance which tells me she knows a _lot_ more.

Nervously, I think about what he had said about finding those Northsiders; an anxious knot blooms in my stomach, and Toni taps even faster at the table, the sound drowned out in the whine of the bell.

iv

At lunch, Toni is oddly quiet. She nods along while I tell her about last night, the scramble from the police and then finding Sweet Pea this morning. She only briefly explains the importance of Jughead – or rather, Jughead’s _lineage_ , because his father was the kingpin of the Serpents for quite some time, apparently, and the boy himself is nowhere to be found. Neither is Sweet Pea and Fangs, Birdie and Max. All out there, somewhere.

Absently, looking at the doors of the cafeteria behind me, Toni mutters, “Go easy on Ruth, Mila. There’s more history in this than you know, all right? So – just try to understand that Ruth didn’t do anything to hurt you. Like I said – you’re not the first stray.”

Looking down at my lunchbox, a little frustrated, I flick open its lock and loosen my scowl at the sight of a pink sticky-note unfurling from between my packed sandwiches and a chocolate bar. In Ruth’s familiar scrawl, I find the words: _I’m sorry_.

“Yeah,” I mumble. “I know.”

v

Shuffling into the house with Jughead just behind me, I hear Ruth in the kitchen, the clink of cutlery and bowls. She appears in the doorway, glancing between us with a wary expression. I smile at her and nod my head, a silent acceptance. She looks surprised, but it soon shifts into a grateful smile. She mouths, _thank you_. Before I can do anything more, Rosie bursts from the living-room and latches her small arms around my waist. Behind us, Jughead watches, his eyes filled with a sudden emotion which is hastily stifled. I raise an eyebrow at him, and he mutters, “I have a little sister, so-…I just thought about her, that’s all.”

I soften a little toward him and peel Rosie from me. “Hey, Rosie-Posie. Jughead might be hanging around for a couple more days. So, why don’t you introduce him to Spot and Sunny? You might need to add Jughead to our list of friends soon, so maybe he ought to meet the big guys first.”

Jughead looks at me, his mouth falling open, stupefied by this change. Rosie observes him carefully, as if assessing his worth for her fishes, then nods, seemingly satisfied. “Okay, Jughead. You can meet our friends.”

“Oh-…Sure, thanks.” He follows behind Rosie, dumbstruck by her enthusiasm as she babbles away, taking his hand and pulling him when she finds he is much too slow for her liking. Jughead glances behind at me, seemingly unsure of how to handle this. I grin at him and that just makes him even more confused.

I suppose I just realised that Toni really was right. I’m not the only stray in the Southside. I just have to make sure Helena never finds that out.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. chapter five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed around the structure of episode three in order to write this. Also, I was wary of making Ruth too liberal as a guardian but then I realised it's Riverdale and the parents/guardians in this show never seem to really notice or do much when their kids are capable of sneaking out to - well, I don't know, run through the woods or liberate their friends from some kind of convent lol. So I'll be equally liberal hehehe. Comments/kudos are appreciated! :) Thank you!

**_chapter five: unfinished sympathy_ **

* * *

 

Blinking through the fuzziness of sleep, I pull myself from my pillows and stretch, basking in the warmth of my blankets before I hear the squeak of a faucet from the bathroom across the hall. Shuffling in from the bathroom with sopping hair, Jughead stands in my doorway with a toothbrush in his mouth and _my_ hairbrush in the other. I stare at him, an eyebrow raised, then let my head flop against my pillows with a sigh. Suddenly, Jughead is pushed against the door, foam speckling his chin while he fumbles, thrown by Rosie who darts through in an excited scramble, her small frame leaping onto the bed and bouncing around it, dropping onto me with little care. I groan and roll her off me, clambering from bed and stomping toward Jughead, snatching my hairbrush from him and taking the bathroom before he can reclaim it. I close the door behind me, and hear him call out, muffled by the frothy toothpaste still held in his mouth, “Good morning to you too, _Sunshine_!”

ii

While Ruth arduously combs through her dense curls, Rosie sings and kicks out her legs, thumping at the table and accidentally knocking over my glass of orange juice. Quickly, I rush for a packet of napkins folded in the drawer by the refrigerator and mop up the spill, which spreads outward and swallows the edges of a newspaper. I drink in the bold, harsh black font of its headline: BLACK HOOD TERROR CONTINUES. I toss the soaked napkins into the trash just as Jughead thunders downstairs, swinging around the banister and poking his head into the kitchen, holding out both of our backpacks. Glancing at the newspaper once more, filled with an unusual dread, I grab him a slice of toast and mumble our goodbyes, skirting around the table and chasing behind Jughead.

iii

In the halls, there are a couple of students still whispering about a pair of Northsiders released from the hospital because of this Black Hood. Jughead is oddly silent. He stands at my battered locker, chosen because it was just about the only locker not yet claimed and whose metal door had not been torn off by some Southsider. I hardly need it. I had told Sweet Pea that I would not write in class, not if it caused issues with the Ghoulies, and that meant I often spent evenings sitting in my bedroom with textbooks scattered around my bed, leafing through chapters by myself.

I look at Jughead. His eyes are drawn toward the other students discussing this Black Hood a couple of feet away from us. One student says, “Good thing, if you ask me – let the Northsiders know what it feels like to be afraid of walking around at night, you know?”

His jaw locks, his mouth tight. I put a hand on his arm and pull him toward our classroom. “Are you all right, Jug?”

“Fine,” he answers. “It’s just…this whole Black Hood thing – I _know_ the kids who were hurt that night. They’re not bad people, they’re just-…kids, like us-…and it just-…”

“Mila!”

Startled, I turn away from Jughead, whose stare had been so fraught with worry that I had become lost in it, torn away from him by Toni who strolls toward me with a wide smile. Sweet Pea walks right alongside her, but he seems moody, annoyed, his glare directed at Jughead who suddenly steps away from me and stalks off toward the classroom by himself.

Confused, I watch him, his hands curled around the strap of his messenger bag and his boots thumping at the linoleum, until he disappears into the classroom. Turning back toward Toni and Sweet Pea, I ask, “What was that about?”

Toni smiles, but this time, it’s a lot weaker. “Sweet Pea and Jughead are just warming up to one another.”

Sweet Pea looks down at her. Her smile falters and there is a weird awkwardness between us all. There is little humour in Sweet Pea this morning. He pushes ahead, right past us, but pauses once he passes directly beside me and he grumbles, “Jughead likes to play the Serpent card only when he needs something. Otherwise, he couldn’t care less about the Serpents and he’s only here because he _has_ to be here.”

Once Sweet Pea marches off in a huff, the students in the hall parting like the Red Sea against his furious riptide, Toni approaches with her arms crossed, her expression narrowed and frustrated. “Jughead and Sweet Pea.” She sighs, dropping her hands to her sides. “An unstoppable force meets an immovable object.”

iv

English class begins, and almost immediately, Jughead leans over and tells me that he has some literary vision for the Southside High newspaper, so he needs to stay back for a little while to work on it with Toni, so he might not be able to walk home with me today. I smile and say, “I can stay with you. Besides, I need to read ‘ _Fahrenheit 451_ ’ and it’s a little hard with Rosie always jumping around trying to tell me what the fishes are thinking through her supposed gift of telepathy.”

Jughead makes a soft noise of amusement and nods, “Yes, the gift of fish-telepathy – and with great power, comes-…”

“Just text Ruth for me, Jug,” I snort, pushing at his shoulder. “Two hours, tops, okay? Or Ruth will send a whole army to come find us.”

“You got it, boss,” he replies, saluting. I smile at him, but soon feel an odd prickle, glancing behind us to find Sweet Pea and Toni like vultures picking at the bare bones of some road-kill – and I’m the road-kill, it seems. Sweet Pea has another deep scowl plastered on his face, while Toni seems more conflicted. I suppose she is stuck between her new friend, Jughead, and her family, the Serpents, who sit around her, all leather and tattooed disapproval once they look at Jughead. I realise that he really has offended them, whatever it was that he said. Toni looks worried, so much so that I turn away from them and attempt to concentrate on Mr. Phillips’ monologue about the nature of humanity, still clutching his own copy of ‘ _Fahrenheit 451_ ’.

v

Outside, Sweet Pea corners me. It is so sudden, his large frame placed in front of me, blocking the lockers, shuffling me into a different classroom with overturned desks and scrunched balls of paper scattered around. Surprised, I stumble and bump against the edge of a desk, glancing behind him to find Toni passing, nodding her head to me with reassurance. She darts off toward Jughead – and I wonder if this is some kind of divide-and-conquer attitude, but I look up at Sweet Pea and, despite the fact that it is just him in here, I feel decidedly outnumbered.

“You should reconsider staying behind with Jughead this evening,” he tells me. “Toni heard you.”

I knit my eyebrows. “What? Why?”

“You’re not a Serpent, but we’re looking out for you because of Ruth-…But that doesn’t mean we’re looking out for Jones. He made his feelings clear,” he replies. “He rejected that protection. So, he’s out there on his own. But if you’re caught with him, scumbags like the Ghoulies won’t care-…”

“So, you want me to just leave Jughead by himself?”

“Yeah.”

I am surprised by the flatness of that one, simple word from him. I notice his throat bobble when he swallows, as if he has heard himself and regrets some part of it, but he holds strong and stares me down despite my hurt. “Sweet Pea,” I start, “…I might not be best friends with Jughead, but he does live with me, and he’s really not that bad. Annoying, maybe. Cynical to an obscene degree for a guy his age. But he’s a _good_ person.”

“Yeah,” he nods. “Because the Ghoulies _really_ care about morality and the goodness in people like Jughead or Guy Montag-…”

“Oh, so you _have_ been listening to Mr. Phillips?” I interrupt, grinning slyly at him.

He pauses, evidently realising he let the name of the protagonist in our book slip out. He tries to maintain his scowl, but it loosens into a small smile – a real one, this time. “I don’t spend all my days running from police and sitting around in the Whyte Wyrm, you know. I don’t take notes in that class. But it doesn’t mean I don’t _learn_ anything by myself.”

“Well, then, you’ll realise Jughead just wants to preserve literature like Guy Montag does. I’m supporting him. And you don’t seem to have such an issue with Toni helping him.”

“Toni can handle herself,” he shrugs; but all of that anger has dripped from him, dropped from the tightness of his shoulders and loosened him enough that he leans against the wall and crosses his arms, looking far more casual and at ease around me.

“I can, too.”

“I should rephrase it,” he smirks, “Toni can handle a _pocket-knife_.”

“Good thing that she’ll be there, then.”

v

In the girls’ bathrooms that evening, I sift around my backpack for my lip-gloss when I hear a sudden cough from the stalls. I hear the scuff of boots, a couple of sniffles and then a girl slips out. Her face startles me because of its corpse-like pallor, her bluish lips and sockets stained in purple, as if she has never known sleep, never known peace. She scuttles out like an insect with her gangly limbs, her denim skirt torn and lopsided on her tall frame. I hear another scuff, paper against tiles, but she has already left, the door swings shut behind her. I look at her stall and find a crumbled straw, unfurling in the grime which stains the floor of Southside High. I am not sure just what it is, but I feel a flush of heat in my stomach, the churn of anxiety. I pat around and pull out my lip-gloss but find I cannot really focus on myself in the cracked shards which compose the mirror, its cracks splintered in blackened filth. I snatch my backpack and push out into the hall, suddenly aware of its emptiness.

I walk toward the room where Jughead had said he would be. I know that Southside High has an issue with narcotics – I had read snippets in the newspapers, often plopped between those paragraphs about this Black Hood. I know that Jughead has an itch to report this stuff. I find him hunched over his notes, scratching out certain sections and adding shorthand messages to himself.

I flop onto the couch and pull out my battered copy of ‘ _Fahrenheit 451_ ’, which Jughead had loaned me, because he had two copies of the book. He had written too many notes in the first one and bought the other to avoid the tabs and copious highlighted phrases. He really has been a bookworm all of his life, but I find there is a calmness in reading like this, with the scratch of his pencil against paper, his hum of discontent once he rubs out a word and his sigh of relief once he finds another.

I hardly notice another girl come in, a box in her arms, not until Jughead jumps up and says, “Betty!”

I look at this pretty girl, whose skin is clear and eyes wide in crystal blue, and realise she is Betty – _his_ Betty, his girlfriend. I am mildly surprised by her simplicity, because she wears a plain jumper with jeans, her hands anxiously pulling at the cuffs and her skin flushed in a light dusting of pink once Jughead hugs her. He pulls away and glances at me. “Betty, this is Mila. Mila, Betty.”

I stand up and hold my hand out, which she takes with a warm smile. “Hi, Betty. It’s nice to meet you, although I’m not sure I thought it would be _here_ , of all places…”

“Yeah, Betty,” Jughead cuts in quickly, looking jumpy and worried “You realise that you want to be here after dark, you should probably have a weapon, right-…”

“And what do you have, tough guy?” I smile at him.

Betty shuffles a little awkwardly. I notice that she brushes off the Southside High charm of broken furniture and flickering lights. Instead, she shows him the stuff she brought. I return to my book, thinking over her attitude toward the Southside, wondering if she really is all that comfortable with it. I still find it unsettling, sometimes – like that moment in the bathroom, with that girl stumbling around in a stupor, or the whole Ghoulie-Serpent thing.

I read a paragraph of my book, but find the words float away from me. I need to read them over and over, oddly stuck on the first sentence. I still think about that girl and then catch Jughead talking about this thing called _jingle-jangle_ , a drug delivered in a straw and possibly run by the Ghoulies, spreading out from this school and into the neighbourhood; it all connects with such clarity.

I say nothing, even when Toni comes in and Jughead introduces her to Betty. Toni looks her over with her usual thoughtfulness, noting details that might be completely invisible to me, but soon Betty packs her stuff and says her goodbyes. Then, Toni gets a call from her uncle and her thoughtfulness seeps into frustration before she excuses herself, and it is just myself and Jughead left behind. Awkwardly, I say, “Jug, you know – earlier, in the bathroom, I think I saw a girl who might have taken this-…this _jingle-jangle_ stuff.”

He swivels around on his seat, eyes wide. “Really? Did you talk to her, find out who she got it from or-…”

“No, Jug. I just watched her walk out, totally out of it and…It was hard to watch, that’s all.”

He softens, seemingly thrown from his journalist instinct to know all facts. “Yeah. Sorry. But this newspaper, this article I’m writing – it could really change things, Mila.”

“You think so?” I ask doubtfully. “Because it seems like you have enough enemies already, Jug. Adding drug dealers on top of it, the _Ghoulies_ of all people-…”

“I can’t let fear stop me,” he says. I look at him, his slumped body now suddenly reanimated, leaning toward me in his determination. “I can’t. Riverdale is a town full of fear and it might stop everyone else, but _not me_.”

I nod and smile fondly at him. “If anybody could make a difference, it’d be you, Jug.”

“Thanks,” he grins. “One dot of ink at a time.”

vi

Cool, hazy blue pours into the halls of Southside High at night, so that its tiles seem to crack in the coldness and its concrete stairwells echo into the emptiness of the school. Slowly, I trail alongside Jughead, unsettled by the deadness of the school, almost wishing that I had not stayed behind purely because of the strange creaks and footsteps which seem to follow behind us, but yet there is never anybody there once I look behind. I think of all the horror-films I had ever watched, the teenagers stood in an abandoned high-school with odd, monstrous creatures lurking between locker-rooms. Jughead marches onward, defiant of both man and monster, but then he momentarily slows, his expression filling with realisation.

“Crap, I left my book in the room. I’ll be right back, Mila, wait here-…”

I open my mouth to protest, but he has already darted down the hall. I still hang around anxiously. I flinch at the sudden approach of footsteps and consider bolting toward Jughead, but I shuffle backward, toward a hall and press myself against the lockers just so that I can peek around. I move backward, then bump against something warm – not at all like a locker, and it makes me let out a small, weak little squeak of a sound. I hear a snort and find Sweet Pea there, his Serpent jacket pulled tight around his biceps, his eyebrows drawn into the cockiness of his expression.

“Spooked, Mila?”

“Barely,” I answer. There is a shakiness in my voice which only makes him smirk more. “What are you doing here?”

“Where’s Jones?”

“He had to go back into the classroom, he forgot his book-…”

“And you didn’t go with him,” he mutters.

“Well, it wasn’t really offered. And you never answered my question.”

Reluctantly, he says, “I made a promise to Ruth.”

I frown. “What? What kind of promise?”

He almost answers, but there comes the rattle of chains and a strange thumping sound, a whimper – I turn and run for the main hall, but Sweet Pea quickly latches onto my arm and tears me backward, so forcefully that it actually hurts. I want to scold him, but he is oddly half-bent, as if straining to hear more and then his eyes widen. He seems torn, like he is not sure whether he should stay with me or run out himself, because there is only one other person we know for sure is in this school, and that is Jughead – but now there has to be others, and we both know that the Serpents, for all their frustration with him, would still not hurt Jughead, and so there are only the Ghoulies left.

I make the choice for him, pressing my nails sharply into the tight grip he holds around my wrist and making him release me. He lets out a string of curses once he snatches his hand back. I scoot around him, rushing out toward the sound. I hear him curse even more before he runs after me, thundering downstairs into a stairwell that opens into another hall. There is a screen between us, but I still spot a couple of silhouettes, garish and tall, contorted around a smaller body curled inward on itself. I feel lightheaded, thrown in a swell of dizziness. Sweet Pea bumps against me and he realises what I’m staring at.

Once, a long time ago, I went into a swimming-pool with a bunch of other children from a school somewhere, someplace, another nameless tack pinned against an abstract map of towns and roads, streets and neighbourhoods. I swam into the depths of the pool with armbands and another kid dared me to pull them off. I was stupid. I could recall the thick onslaught of chlorine into my nostrils, slopped into my mouth and spat out in panicked coughs, and I tried to swim toward the rim of the pool to grip onto its edge and haul myself onto the safety of those hideous off-white tiles. I could remember the lead denseness in my legs, worn from the strain of staying afloat.

I feel like that now.

But Sweet Pea never hesitates. He runs ahead of me, toward that screen, where a couple of the silhouettes separate and run off, but three remain. Sweet Pea’s shadow blends into theirs. It is almost artistic in the swell of black outlines which string together and pull outward, like the strings of an accordion, but soon the other three run off, and there are just two silhouettes left behind; one stood with a stoop, arm wrapped around its stomach it seems, but the other is still there, still curled into a ball.

“Mila?” Sweet Pea calls. He falls from that screen and fumbles for a second. He straightens himself with a wince and looks at me, worried. “Mila, I know you’re probably scared, but Jughead needs you to be calm right now, okay?”

The straight, determined tone of his voice shakes me and makes me turn my eyes toward him, nodding. I find myself again. I breathe slowly, frantically, slowly again, over and over. I knew the Ghoulies could hurt Jughead – I just didn’t think they _would_ – and it seems so stupid now, so infantile. Absently, I repeat, “Calm, okay. Calm.”

Jughead is dazed, he flinches from Sweet Pea when he bends to slither an arm around Jughead and lift him up, but soon realises that it is just us. He has blood on his cheek, his hands tremble. I hold him against the lockers and check his face, smoothing out his hair, its strands drenched in his own blood. The skin around his right eye is bruised and scratched. He limps and almost falls before Sweet Pea catches him again, throwing the deadweight of Jughead’s arm around his shoulder and hauling him forward. He walks him toward the exit and I follow behind them.

I wanted to do more for him. I _want_ to do more, now. I wish I had reacted like Sweet Pea, but I had been so stunned by the brutality of each punch and kick that I had stood motionless, like a mannequin, limbs filled with a strange kind of concrete-heaviness. I think of my Grandmother, out of the blue, her orange warmth and floral kindness. I also think of her frustration with me, sometimes – _Mila, don’t give me that look, answer me, are you mute-…_

“Mila,” Sweet Pea calls again, softly this time. Jughead’s head droops against his own chest, his mouth slack and tired, his words pour out in trickles of blood. Sweet Pea hauls him up, all of his concrete-heaviness, because Jughead needs Sweet Pea to be calm right now, even if he is probably scared. “Come on.”

vii

Stood at the outskirts of my neighbourhood, we wonder what we are supposed to do; some quiet, muted part of me wants to scream that he should be in a hospital, but this is the Southside and this is Jughead, whose father is already behind bars, whose brief residency at our school has landed him with cuts and flowering bruises, whose body is now like that of a new-born fawn in its first steps, awkward and stumbling. He pulls away from Sweet Pea, barely able to balance, but he shoves off our attempts to grab him and help him. He says, “No, no-…”

Then he meets my eyes, and his are lost in a sheen of glassiness before they roll into blank whiteness and he falls backward, unable to push us away, because he hits the curb. Sweet Pea grabs him, pulls him up again. There is a moment when he holds him there, and Sweet Pea looks like a boy – and he _is_ a boy, so young and so lost, but his leather has been scuffed and ripped, and I realise that those are slashes from a pocket-knife which never cut deep enough to hurt him – but it _could have_ , and that rush of cold numbness hits me again, holds me still, incapable of more than anything more than just drawing in shaky, stuttered breaths.

“We need Ruth,” I blurt out. “We need-…We need an _adult_ , Sweet Pea, he could be really hurt, a brain injury for all we know!”

Sweet Pea drags his stare up from the puddles which fill the potholes in my street. He seems too tired to fight against me or anybody else for that matter, but the Southside always punches him first, and if it is not the Southside throwing the first hit, then the Northside comes along to push him around instead. So, he hauls himself upward and brings Jughead with him. “Okay,” he nods. “Okay.”

viii

Ruth lifts a dampened cloth from a lukewarm bowl of water and brushes off crusted blood; blown out in a weak, flaccid wheeze, mumbled words come from Jughead, still laid out upon the couch, his lips attempting to form apologies to Ruth. I hear him say, _I didn’t think it could happen to me_. Ruth has not properly spoken to myself or Sweet Pea, whose large frame seems strange and out-of-place when stood in the arch of the kitchen. She had cleaned his cuts, too, but she had been quick and sharp about it. I look at him nervously, but he remains aloof, carefully watching Ruth press plasters against each cut and scratch which marks Jughead. Quietly, she says, “Sweet Pea, you can stay tonight. I’ll stay with Jughead, so you can take my bed if you want.”

“Ruth-…” Sweet Pea mumbles.

“No arguments, Sweet Pea. Not tonight.” I wince at her tone. She must notice, because she breathes in deeply and says, “We can talk about this in the morning, all right? Jughead will be fine. Let him rest – and get your own, too.”

I cast another worried glance at Jughead before I slip out into the hall and slink upstairs, hearing Sweet Pea behind me. His boots are dull and heavy against the wood. It still feels bizarre for him to be here, so late at night, but he seems so familiar with everything. In the bathroom, he bends down and opens the cupboard beneath the sink and fishes out a packet of toothbrushes. I stand in the hallway, anxious, but Sweet Pea hardly looks at me. I step into the bathroom and quietly ask, “Do you think she’s right? That he’ll be okay?”

“Seen worse,” Sweet Pea shrugs.

“God, Sweet Pea, if you hadn’t been there-…”

“ _You_ shouldn’t have been there,” he cuts off coldly. “I told you. It was stupid. The Ghoulies only took the opportunity because it was offered to them on a _platter_.”

Hurt, I stumble over my words. “S-Sweet Pea, that’s not fair-…”

“What if you had been with him? You think they would have gone easy on you because – because, _what_? You’re a _girl_? Or a girl who isn’t even really from the Southside? Not a Serpent, not a Southsider, _nothing_ – you’re only protected because of _Ruth_. And if the Ghoulies had seen you were with him, you’d be just like Jughead now, lain out on a couch, half-conscious. That’s how it is here, and we _told_ you-…”

“All right,” I whisper. “I understand.”

He isn’t finished. He spins around, and that tide of anger floods from him once more, spilling out in his hunched shoulders and snarled mouth. “You think I _want_ to fight with those guys? I don’t. But I have to – people like _me_ , people like Fangs and Toni, we _have_ to – and it doesn’t even _matter_ -…”

“It does,” I protest weakly. “It does matter.”

He stares at me, flicking from my mouth to my eyes, taking in everything. I wish I could tell what he was thinking. I feel as if I almost catch it just before he looks away, scoffing. “I’m not staying here.”

“You have to,” I say. “Ruth said-…”

“ _Ruth said_ ,” he repeats mockingly. “I’m not some kid, Mila.”

_But you are_ , I want to say, like Ruth had told me. _You are a kid_. I stand, motionless, even if I want to say more – _answer him, am I mute_? “You can’t go home now. It’s too late.”

He laughs bitterly. “Yeah, you’re right about that. I can’t. Got kicked out.”

Thrown by his words, I stare at him in shock. “Sweet Pea, why didn’t you say anything? Why would your parents do that-…”

“My Dad got tired,” he answers vaguely. I can tell he doesn’t want me to push it; it hangs there, between us, as if his words have become tangible and I can touch their spiked edges. “Maybe tired of me, tired of…of this-…” – he gestures his hand around, but I realise that he looks at the glittering body of the snake pressed against his leather jacket, and his anger fades into something much denser, that concrete-heaviness – “…Tired of everything. I’ve been staying at the trailer park with Fangs. Doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” I say, again. I think of him and I think of Jughead all at once, the unfairness of it, how Jughead is downstairs with a bruised face and a tattered copy of ‘ _Fahrenheit 451_ ’ for his troubles. “It _should_.”

“It should,” he echoes quietly. “But it doesn’t.”

I am quiet for a while. He sinks down to sit on the edge of the bathtub. I follow suit and sit alongside him, aware of how strange this all is, because I had never imagined him here, in this place. I had imagined him punching that dent in my bedroom wall and I had imagined him with Toni and the others at the Whyte Wyrm, in that time before I had ever been in Riverdale. I had just never imagined him here, in this small bathroom.

Suddenly, he says, “I wish it did.”

Against the swell of sadness, I reach out and dare touch his hand, intending to simply squeeze it like I often do with Rosie whenever she is upset, but he takes mine, squeezes it first. He doesn’t pull away. I think of Jughead downstairs and the Ghoulies lurking in the stairwell of the school and the Southside; he squeezes my hand again, and again, and I realise that he is thinking about all these things, too, and it doesn’t feel so lonely in here, just here, in this small bathroom, with him.


	6. chapter six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are finally getting into the episodes which feature the Serpents more and more, so I wrote a nice chapter to give Mila a chance to grow by herself before we get into the darker side of the Serpent life. I hope you guys like it and please, if you can, give me a review! :) I'd really appreciate any kind of feedback! :)

**_chapter six: who we think is the one_ **

* * *

 

Somewhere around dawn, I hear the creak of wooden floorboards pressed beneath the burden of tattered boots and then comes the low murmur of a deep, masculine voice which fills the house in its quiet rumble – punctured in brief snippets of a firm, feminine response in the form of hums. There is the scrape of furniture, a chair, the crack of the front-door pulled from its old hinges. The house empties itself, breathes out in a tired exhale, and settles itself into silence; dawn passes in a pool of pinkish-orange streaks and flowers into cloudless blue, sunshine pouring into my bedroom in harsh lines of yellow, wisps of dust thrown upward into a faint, glittering shimmer once Rosie bursts in, punctual and pressing herself against me with breathless wonder. I catch her and hold her for a moment, hold her against me and think of Jughead on that couch, bloodied and sore. I say, “Time for school, _Rosie-Posie_.”

 She giggles and taps at my nose with her fingertip. “It’s Saturday, silly!”

“Oh.” I smile weakly at her and then lift her off the bed, but she hangs from my hip and droops downward onto my leg like a monkey. She shrieks with laughter while I struggle to pull her weight along with mine, out toward the hall. She drops from me and then hops around on her haunches, draws her eyebrows tight, her knuckles pressed against the floorboards. She lets out little yips and shrieks, her impression of the gorillas she had recently seen in _Tarzan_.

She attempts a forward roll, her pyjama-pants riding upward at her ankles and her form slightly lopsided, because she soon topples over and bumps her head against the edge of a radiator. I hold still and await tears – but Rosie pushes herself upward and puffs out her chest all over again and shouts, “ _Me, Tarzan - me, strong_!”

I roll my eyes and reach for her, lifting her upward and half-carrying her downstairs. At the bottom, she leaps forward on her haunches again and scampers into the kitchen, where I can hear Ruth preparing our breakfast. The rich scent of bacon wafts into the hall, and I realise that it really must be Saturday and I had somehow forgotten in the rush of last night.

I pause, shifting forward to glance into the living-room and finding the couch completely empty, all blankets tucked beside it in neat piles and pillows left on top of them. I frown and then follow Rosie into the kitchen, noting that Ruth does not look at me yet. She smacks the plates a little too roughly onto the table. I wince with each crack.

Rosie climbs onto the small footstool placed by the fishes’ bowl, sprinkling out their food with careful consideration, ensuring that both Spot and Sunny eat enough. I watch their small, round mouths pluck at each shred and then float downwards, drifting around one another in slow laps. I am lost in thought, watching them, until a plate of bacon and eggs is plopped in front of me with particular vigour.

Ruth sidles into her own seat and chats with Rosie about the plans for the day – cinema, a trip to the park, that sort of stuff. I listen and answer only if Rosie asks something to me directly, casting wary glances at Ruth whenever she is particularly quiet. Inwardly, I wonder if she has spoken with Helena, this new social-worker. I wonder if she waited until we had all fallen asleep and then called her in the dead of night, while Jughead swallowed copper saliva and Sweet Pea fumed alone. I wonder if she told her that I am too much to handle.

I lose my appetite and push my eggs toward Rosie, who happily scoops them onto her plate and munches away. Once she finishes, she slides from her chair and crouches low, contorting her face into a deep, concentrated scowl and leaping toward her toys, catching her plush giraffe and pretending to bite into its long neck – I am not sure that was ever shown in _Tarzan_ , but Rosie likes to add her own details to each story.

I stand to collect the plates, one hand poised outward when Ruth suddenly states, “Sit.”

It is a simple order, but her tone is strict, scolding and parental in a way that Ruth has never really been until this moment. I slip backward into my seat with great heaviness. I prepare myself for the words which will surely come; _you really are a great kid, Mila, but I’m not sure that this will work out, you know, with Rosie here and – well, she’s just so young and you’re-… You’re a great kid, like I said, but-…_

Ruth returns to her chair and flops into it, rubbing at her forehead tiredly. “Mila, sweetheart-…”

I smooth out my expression into one of blank disinterest, because it is easier that way. I shrink into my seat, slump against it as if this is something dull, something which doesn’t even bother me, but my heartbeat flutters against my chest. I want to defend myself. I want to scream that we just wanted to study at a school which barely even _teaches_ , that this was the Ghoulies’ fault and not ours, never ours. Jughead just wanted to write his stories and I just wanted to read another, but it is never that easy, here; never that easy anywhere else, either.

I can hear Rosie jumping from the couch, onto the floorboards, protecting her territory from the encroaching – albeit limp – group of teddy-bears and that one ill-fated giraffe. I feel my expression flicker, a spasm of my mouth which drops into remorse, because I probably should have stayed away from the school and away from Jughead – but I _couldn’t_ – and maybe I should have kept Toni and Sweet Pea and all of the others are at a distance – but I _couldn’t_ – and if I wasn’t so _stupid_ , if I could just _think_ before I _act_ , because who would ever take a kid like _me_ -…

“I’m sorry you had to witness that last night, Mila,” Ruth says. I look up at her, uncertain. She continues, “The Southside has its charms, but the Ghoulies sure aren’t one of them. I’m not stupid. I knew Jughead had ruffled some feathers. He’s F.P Jones’ boy – it’s in his blood. I just hadn’t expected the Ghoulies to get the chance to…to show him just how _much_ he had ruffled them so soon, I guess.”

I watch the distant sheen in her eyes and how she looks off toward the living-room, its colours blurring into smudges of mint and white. I think over Sweet Pea appearing that night. Slowly, I ask, “Ruth, did you send Sweet Pea that night?”

“No,” she answers. “But I did ask him to look out for you, just like I asked Toni. I asked all of the Serpents, actually. I just never told him to be there that night, specifically. I’m glad he was, though. He has a good heart. A good soul.”

“Did he leave?”

She nods. She smiles, too, and it makes her seem even younger, her skin bathed in a golden warmth from the sunlight streaming between the blinds in the kitchen.

She says, “Sweet Pea came down earlier, wanted to explain things. He was very eager to explain that _you_ had only been looking out for Jughead. And he was looking out for you, like I asked, and so-…well, in a roundabout way, I suppose there is enough blame for us all to share, isn’t there? Although I’m sure none of the Ghoulies lost any sleep last night.”

Sweet Pea had defended me, and it makes me blush just a little, looking away from her for a quick second to attempt some kind of blasé attitude which fails almost immediately. Ruth must notice, because she smiles. I swallow awkwardly, hoping the blush has faded. I lift my foot and place it on the edge of my seat, wrap my arms around my knee and place my chin against my kneecap. “What else did Sweet Pea say?”

“He said he was staying with Fangs for a while. Problems with his Dad,” she replies softly. “But you know that already, don’t you? It’s good that he told you, Mila. It shows a lot of trust. Sweet Pea is not a boy who trusts easily. And while we were talking, Jughead got up and asked if he could stay at his Dad’s trailer. Sweet Pea agreed to walk him there, although I’m not sure he was really all that willing. I’m sure if Jughead didn’t suffer through the kind of night that he did, Sweet Pea might not have been so _sweet_ at all.”

I blink at her. “Jughead isn’t gonna stay with us anymore?”

“He might make an appearance every once in a while, for the sake of his social-worker. Otherwise, no. I think he wants to be closer to his Dad. I think he’s starting to understand the Serpents, now – that it isn’t just about a leather jacket.” Her eyes meet mine, dark and serious. “I think you’re starting to understand that, too, Mila.”

“Yeah,” I say, and it comes out in a croak. “I think I understand more than ever, after last night. It was really…”

Silence curls between us, draped like a heavy coat around our shoulders. Ruth shrugs it off and quietly asks, “Do you-…Do you still want to stay with us?”

There is a delicate kind of worry behind the question; maybe even fear. Startled, I stare at her with wide eyes. “Of course, Ruth – I want nothing more than to stay with you – but I thought you wouldn’t…. that after last night you might-…”

She watches me carefully, then nods. “I think I understand a lot more after last night, too, kiddo. But I never had to think about whether I wanted you here or not. I have _always_ wanted you here, Mila. From that very first call asking if I would take you in, I knew. I think we get along. Rosie adores you. I just-…sometimes, I wish I could bring you to the Northside, spare you from the Serpents and Ghoulies and…and the Southside itself.”

“I don’t wish for that,” I tell her. “I don’t think I like the Northside, anyway. I like it here. Serpents and all.”

She snorts. “Serpents and all.”

“Ruth,” I start delicately. “Are you…Are _you_ a Serpent?”

She smiles, but its warmth has been smothered in bitterness. “I suppose the Serpents consider me to be one.”

“Do you consider yourself to be one?”

Her smile weakens, falling at the corners. She leans forward, her elbows against the table. “Yeah. But I never did get the tattoo, never did do that stupid dance-…” – she continues despite my obvious confusion, her expression amused now – “…. but I do love my brother. Serpent and all.”

“Your brother?”

Rosie comes rushing in, clutching that giraffe, whose dark eyeballs seem to swirl with misery once she flings him onto the table and then tries to climb into my lap. I lift her up, let her sit with me. She wants me to watch _Tarzan_ with her, and Ruth stands with aching slowness. I catch the fondness in her eyes once she looks at us, at Rosie and her bubbly smile, but there is still that sadness in her, swelling into her movements when she plucks each plate from the table and plops them into the basin full of lukewarm water. She mouths, _we can talk later_.

I nod and lift Rosie, scooting out my chair to stand. Then, before we slip into the living-room, Ruth calls out, “Oh, and Mila – Sweet Pea mentioned that you might be in need of a phone. He said it was hard to contact you without using smoke signals and messenger pigeons. He said you’d understand. Although I do wonder why he is _so_ interested in trying to contact you in the first place, don’t you? I told him-…”

“Rosie, where did you put your copy of _Tarzan_ again? I can’t seem to find it,” I cut in, quickly shuffling Rosie into the living-room and pretending to look around for it. Ruth looks in at us from the doorway and laughs loudly, but Rosie only looks confused and a little put out by the fact that she has been left out of the loop.

“It’s over there by the DVD player,” she states flatly. Then, with a pout and a whole lot of jealousy, she adds, “Maybe this _Sweet Pea_ boy could have told you.”

Both Ruth and I stare at her, mouths held slightly apart in surprise, but apparently Rosie has noticed more than we thought she might. I burn scarlet and fumble toward the DVD player, attempting to hide behind my long hair which falls from my shoulder like a curtain. Ruth laughs even more, and Rosie hops onto the couch with a satisfied grin, reaching for the remote. “After this,” she says, “we can play Tarzan together – I’ll be Kala and you can be Tarzan. You can ask Sweet Pea to be Jane.”

“ _Rosie_!”

ii

Drifting between narrow streets, I cycle aimlessly, cutting through the hollowed-out bones of the Southside. I want to memorise its emptiness, its strips of old shops and tired junkyards. I look for the trailer park based on the directions Ruth had given me, my skin warmed by the sunshine and soothed by the gentle ripple of a breeze. I feel small butterflies at the thought of seeing Sweet Pea and wonder if it will be awkward because of last night, but I tell myself that Jughead will probably be there too, and Fangs – a totally normal thing for friends to just hang out, nothing special. Yet I still need to reign in the small smile which comes at the thought of Sweet Pea; a crush, _nothing special_. I take a left, swing through a cut shortcut and spot a bleached, worn sign: SUNNYSIDE TRAILER PARK.

Surrounded in wire, it has burnt barrels dotted around and a couple of broken pieces of furniture, coated in rot. I slip off of my bicycle and roll it alongside me, looking around curiously. I am not sure which trailer belongs to the Jones’ family, but I soon notice a familiar face in the form of Mags, who sits on the concrete stairs leading into a different trailer, a cigarette poised between her lips. I roll my bicycle into the grass and lower it, let it sink into the soft earth and then approach her with a bright smile. She must catch the scuff of my sneakers, glancing toward me and then raising an eyebrow, grinning.

“Mila! Wanted a piece of Sunnyside Heaven, huh?”

“Looking for Jughead,” I reply. _And possibly Sweet Pea_. “Have you seen him around?”

She tilts her head toward a trailer a couple of rows over. “Sweet Pea brought him here a couple of hours ago and he’s been cooped up in there ever since.”

iii

Folded, doily-like curtains smother the sunlight and muffle the trailer in a dense sheet of musty staleness; Jughead flops against his couch and holds an arm over his bruised, swollen face, his hand limp. I sit on a plastic fold-out chair just across from him and glance around at the small scatterings of trinkets and family heirlooms, the framed photographs of a much-younger Jug, his cheeks flushed much like Rosie, although he never smiles much in any of those captured moments of his youth – he is still youthful now, but Jug has an old soul, it seems to bleed through and make him seem older. I notice a shirt cast by the end of the couch and glimpse the dark, bloodied stains around its collar.

“How are you feeling, Jug?” I ask softly.

He snorts, the sour sound trapped beneath his arm. “Well, Mila, I feel like I got hit by a train. Multiple trains. One after the other.”

I look at another photograph of a kid with sandy-blonde hair and a sweet smile, her hands held behind her back and one leg kicked outward, grinning at the photographer behind the camera. I suppose that must be his sister. Jughead drops his arm from his face and looks directly at me, seeming a little regretful.

“Sorry. I’m just-… I’m just a little _overwhelmed_ ,” he admits, his words quiet in the emptiness of his trailer.

“Are you sure you want to stay here, Jug? Alone?”

He nods. “Honestly, this is just about the only thing I _am_ sure about. I was already putting enough pressure on Ruth by even _asking_ to stay with you guys. Besides, I was just being cowardly. Attempting to avoid a situation which is unavoidable.”

“Well, I wouldn’t call you cowardly,” I frown. “You’re a little too hard on yourself, you know.”

He looks away from me, focusing on the pockmarked ceiling. I catch sight of a raised, purpled lump on his forehead. “Yeah, so I’m told. But it was nice of you to come over and check on me, Mila. I appreciate it.”

“Now you’re being too soft,” I grin at him. “Besides, I figured we had to sort out the hairbrush situation, since you were so fond of borrowing mine. I get weekdays, you get weekends?”

He laughs, finally loosening out his coiled form and pulling himself from the couch. He leans forward, his elbows balanced on his knees. “Weekends and holidays.”

“Just not Christmas. Deal?”

He pretends to consider it, pursing his lips and then wincing because of a cut which splits open and oozes just a little. He scrunches the cuff of his checked shirt and holds it against his mouth, still attempting a smile. “Yeah. Deal.”

“So, what happens now, Jug?”

He is quiet for a little while, seeming lost in thought. “You know,” he mumbles. “I’m not really sure. With all of this Black Hood stuff-…I really don’t know. Somehow, things seemed a lot easier before Jason Blossom died.” He notes my confusion. “He was a rich kid from the Northside, perfect in almost every sense – until he wasn’t, anymore. He was found dead at Sweetwater River a couple of months ago. Turned out Jason – and the whole _Blossom clan_ – had a lot more hidden behind their white-picket-fence fantasy of wealth and red-headed prosperity.” Jughead swallows and drops his eyes toward the carpet, tiredly rubbing at his temples. “It all started with that. And now, here we are, and everything is more complicated than ever.”

“But the Black Hood is only targeting Northsiders, right?” I ask.

Jughead nods. “He has anointed himself the moral compass of Riverdale, annihilating all those who would dare refuse his judgement. You got here at a good time.” He does not smile, anymore. He looks at me with darkness in him, shrouding his usually bright eyes. “Be careful, Mila. Riverdale is a town with too many secrets. It started with Jason Blossom, but now I don’t think it’ll ever end. Just-…Be careful.”

iv

Scooping my bicycle from the grass, I settle on the seat and slowly push out of Sunnyside Trailer Park. If Sweet Pea is around, then I cannot seem to find him. I hardly want to seem _too_ eager. So, I swallow all of this disappointment and skirt around neighbourhoods, distracted by all that Jughead had told me about the Blossoms and this Black Hood. I think of my Grandmother, too. I wonder if she would have liked all of my new friends – and my stomach swoops at the thought that I might be able to consider Jughead and Toni and all of the other Serpents _friends_. Sometimes, though, I wonder if we really are friends or if the Serpents just feel _obligated_ to be nice because of Ruth – if they feel sorry for the foster kid and only pretend to be friendly. I wish I didn’t think like that. I do, anyway.

Turning onto another street, I glimpse a kid on a bicycle like mine, only its colour is a bright red; Gideon rides ahead of me, much faster, seeming to flit through the streets as if he is rushing away from something that I cannot quite see and so I call out for him, but he doesn’t seem to hear. I am not sure that he hears anything at all, his skin flushed red like it had been once all of those Northsiders had surrounded us. I am a little surprised to find him on the Southside, because I had assumed he was a Northsider. I push hard against my pedals to chase after him, feeling my heart really thump after just a couple of seconds from the effort. He whizzes around a corner, and I realise that he is heading for the bridge which leads into the Northside.

I almost hesitate, but I am already close, so close; I cross that bridge and skid against the pavement once Gideon stops quite suddenly, his hands clasping at his face and his shoulders hunched. Unsure of myself, I slow down until I am right beside him, only a block or so into the Northside. Out here, there are just some woodlands and a sparse number of unused bus-stops, because the buses do not pass the bridge, anymore. Just once every couple of hours. Even then, I hear it is pretty unreliable.

“Gideon?” I call out gently. “Hey, all you all right?”

His head snaps up, his expression coloured in surprise, although he seems to recognise me. He blinks rapidly and then wipes at his cheeks with his fists, embarrassed. “Oh, um-…Hey. Never did catch your name that first time.”

“Mila.” I stick my hand out. He cannot seem to rid himself of that surprise, even when he shakes my hand and then settles his own on his handlebars, bicycle balanced beneath him. “You seemed really upset. I didn’t think it was right not to check if you were okay. So… _are_ you okay?”

He lets out a wobbly sigh, exhaled outward with the slow dip of his shoulders. “I think I will be. Thanks, Mila.” He pauses for a second, then starts over. “Look, I wanted to apologise for all that stuff with those Northside guys-…”

“I’m used to jerks, Gideon. It wasn’t your fault. It didn’t seem like they were your friends, anyway.”

“No, they weren’t,” he agrees. He runs a hand through his short, gelled blond hair, smoothed over in a flick that suits his handsome face, his jawline coated in a shadow of stubble. I realise that Gideon dresses quite sharply, his navy tailored pants combined with a neat, grey jumper of rich cotton – all in sharp contrast to the dark, black leather of the Southside, which makes it even more bizarre that he was over there. “They really hold a grudge against the Southside kids. Serpents especially.”

“I figured. It doesn’t seem like the Southside really likes them, either.”

“Can’t say that I blame them for that,” he mutters lowly, under his breath.

I glance around, noting that we are standing pretty much in the street and fortunate that it is pretty empty. “You wanna cycle around for a little while?”

He still has that surprised look, his mouth held slightly apart, eyebrows raised. “Here? Like, around the Northside?”

“Why not? We’re not doing anything wrong, right?”

“Wrong, right,” he repeats with a faint, amused smile. “No, we’re not, but-…”

“Or we could cycle back into the Southside,” I suggest.

He looks a little wary. I am reluctant to move any further into the Northside myself, not even any further than just standing at the cusp of its side of the bridge. Gideon seems equally unsure about the Southside. Still, he shrugs and then turns his bicycle around. I am inwardly relieved. I walk alongside him, the wheels of my bicycle clicking with each step, relieved once we hit Southside territory. He is familiar with the streets, he takes turns without much thought and we wander toward the main street. Eventually, we find a small bench which is bolted into the ground, right at the mouth of a park with overgrown grass and trees with spindly, gnarled branches.

We rest our bicycles against the pavement and sit, looking out at the rows of shops ahead of us – _people-watching_ , I remember my Grandmother calling it, _watching the world pass and remembering that you are just a tiny speck amongst a bunch of other tiny specks_. She found that calming, somehow. I am not sure what I think of it, although I look at Gideon and wonder if that is how he feels now, because his eyes are distant, his shoulders hunched inward so that his hands press between his knees and his body is curled into itself, cutting off all of those other tiny specks out there.

“Are you from the Southside, Gideon?” I ask.

He startles at the question; it is easy to startle Gideon, because he seems timid and nervous, eternally poised for flight. He licks his lips and shrugs again. “Um, sort of. I was born in the Northside and I live there but-…my Mom is still here, on the Southside. She’s always been on the Southside, born and raised. My Dad doesn’t know that I come over here and visit her sometimes. It didn’t end well. Between them, I mean. He doesn’t like the Southside. Not that my Dad really _likes_ anything.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmur quietly. “That’s rough.”

“Yeah,” he nods. “Yeah. It is. Not quite Northside, not quite Southside.”

“But you were born there,” I argue, “on the Northside. Doesn’t that count?”

“Not really – not for those guys you saw that first day we met. There are people on the Northside who think any kind of Southside blood is just _bad blood_ , like you have a disease or something infectious. I don’t know. They just-…They like to remind me that I’m not _really_ a Northsider. Then I come over here and I get told the same thing, you know. _You’re not really a Southsider._ Sometimes, I feel like I only exist on that bridge. Caught somewhere in-between. Not quite one, not quite the other.”

I nod, sighing. I think I understand that feeling more than most.

Gideon blurts, “I really am sorry that I didn’t do more that day, Mila. Outside that shop, with Reggie and the other guys ragging on you for being ‘ _in-between’_. Reggie might be cute and totally _shredded_ , but the guy is a complete asshole.”

I smirk at his description of Reggie. Apparently, Gideon is batting for the other side, even if that side might be _North_ side material. Shredded material, at that. “I’m glad you think so, Gideon. But really, you couldn’t have done anything without getting hurt for it. I’d rather not be the cause of that. You’d be surprised to know I have had enough fights in my life.”

“No,” he replies softly. “That doesn’t surprise me at all.”

I look down at my hands, loop my fingers together, scratching at the pavement with the tip of my shoe. “Well, it’s better for me if I just avoid that stuff.” I think of Jughead, and add, “Attempting to avoid a situation which is unavoidable.”

“Yeah, I understand. I avoid a lot of stuff, too. Or at least, I _try_ to avoid it. Doesn’t always work out, even though I’m not sure anyone knows I exist in my school bar the guys who like to make jokes about me.” He blinks suddenly, then looks bashful. “I’m sorry. That was probably a weird thing to say.”

“No, it’s not. I know what you mean. Whenever I joined a new school, I usually didn’t make a lot of friends and the ones I did, they weren’t the kind of friends that you really _wanted_ to be around. Made you do stupid stuff just for ‘ _fun_ ’. I stopped trying, after a while. Just stuck by myself - ate alone, studied alone. Did everything alone.”

Gideon is silent, looking thoughtful. Then he says, “I lied to my Dad today. I told him I was meeting some friends. He thinks that I’m at this bowling place on the Northside. I have literally _invented_ people for him, only first-name friends – he never questions why I never show pictures of any of these days out with friends, never questions why I never bring them over to the house. Sometimes, I think he doesn’t ask because he knows the answer already.”

I look at him with a kind of heaviness in my chest, as if his words have settled inside it, scrunched themselves tight between my organs. I swallow, thinking about what Ruth might say, if she was here. I can almost hear her gentle tone. I look at Gideon and smile at him. “You know, you could just take a picture with me. I’ll be the first-name friend – if you want, I mean.”

I feel my skin burn from embarrassment once he turns to me with this blank look and wonder if I just made a fool of myself. I had thought it was a nice sentiment, but perhaps I had read this all wrong and Gideon thinks I am too forward and rash. I am not like Rosie; she often blurts out things and never seems too regretful of anything, but I sit here now and wish that I could hide behind a mask just to cover this dark, reddened blush. Then Gideon’s blankness draws into a bright, warm smile, and I feel myself unfurl from this ball of remorse, lifting my head and staring right at him when he fishes around in his pocket and pulls out his phone.

“You know what,” he starts. “It’s been a really crappy day for me, Mila. So, I would like nothing more than a photograph with a first-name friend.”

He holds out the phone and I watch us in its reflection, first a blurred smear of colour which sharpens into our smiles, shoulders pressed together. It is a quick flash, and he holds it close so that we can study ourselves. I am not so red in it; the blush has faded into my usual pallor and I find I like the photograph a lot. It makes me think of those Polaroids of Ruth and Rosie, held in those files I had read, and something occurs to me with a sharp punch in my chest. I mumble, “That is the first photograph anybody has taken with me in a really long time. I think the last time I took one, I was with my Grandmother”

“Is she photogenic at least?” he grins.

“She was.”

“Oh.” It is his turn to flush red, fumbling with his words. “S-Sorry, I just thought-…Although I guess you’re with Ruth so-…Oh, was that really rude? I just thought-…Well, I didn’t think, obviously, and-…”

“Gideon, it’s fine,” I laugh. “We’re both being really open today, aren’t we?”

“I think I couldn’t hold in all that stuff anymore,” he replies. “I wanted to see my Mom today to talk to her but she has-…she has her bad days, sometimes. She’s not really-…well.”

“Oh,” I echo; such a simple sound, so plain, and yet still full of so much more than I am able to say to that. “Is she-…ill?”

“Not physically,” he answers vaguely. I understand, then. _Oh_ , my brain hums, that same old ‘ _oh_ ’. “She just has those bad days when she’s a little tired and she doesn’t want to talk much. She just wants to sleep and be left alone. Most days, actually. But I like to visit her anyway. Just to let her know I’m still here.”

“I’m glad you were. I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”

He smiles at me, a kind smile which smooths out the furrowed nature of his brows when he is unaware of anybody watching him. I think that Gideon has been lonely for too long, too much of a speck left behind by all the other specks, never watched. I had told him that I had met some bad kids in other schools, the kind of friends who put you in bad situations and never really helped you escape them, either. Instead, they left you with the blame and the hurt. I don’t think Gideon has had bad friends. I’m not sure he has had _any_ friends at all, but not from choice or anything that he ever did for himself – he’s just _in-between_ , stood on a bridge between two sides, and neither seem to want him.

“You said you told your Dad you were bowling with your first-name friends today, right?” I ask him suddenly.

He looks confused. “Uh, yeah. Why?”

“Do you maybe want to _actually_ go bowling next week?”

Now, Gideon looks more than just confused, he looks as if he thinks I might be about to prank him – that this _Reggie_ guy might leap from the branches behind us, shrieking with laughter that Gideon fell for it all, but then he realises that I am serious, and he nods quickly. “Y-Yeah – yeah, that’d be great! But the bowling alley is on the Northside. Are you okay with going over there?”

I swallow my nervousness, nodding at him with what I hope is a reassuring smile. “Yeah. I’ll be okay.” I stand and brush out my skirt. “How about we meet here, 2 o’clock next Saturday? Bring your bicycle with you, we can ride over there, and I’ll beat you so fast you’ll be wishing you’d stayed at the bridge.”

He snorts and stands, looking down at me. He is only a couple of inches taller, nowhere near the towering height of Sweet Pea – just a little taller than Jughead, actually, if he took off the beanie, which I am certain adds at _least_ an inch or two to his slumped frame, poor posture borne from hours spent hunched over his laptop.

“Big talk, Mila,” Gideon grins. “We’ll see how much you brag after _I_ beat _you_ next Saturday. Loser has to buy the winner a sundae from Pop’s – it’s a diner over there.”

He sticks out his hand to seal the bet, and I accept, shaking hard.

v

Pulling my bicycle into the hallway, I shrug off my green jacket and drape it onto the banister of the staircase. I glance into the living-room and find Ruth there, Rosie slumped against her chest, both of them asleep, their skin flickering in the light of the television which is stuck on the opening title-menu for _Tarzan_. I snort and clamber upstairs, figuring that I should change into pyjamas and then return to collect Rosie, tuck her into bed and then chat with Ruth for a while – our usual routine. It feels good to say that; a _routine_ , something familiar, something unbroken. I prefer things like that, quiet and certain. I slip into my bedroom and push open my closet, picking out a pair of pyjamas dotted in penguins. I snort, thinking of what Toni would say if she saw these, quickly shaking off my jeans and tossing them onto my bed when I hear a small thump. I realise that a box had fallen from my bed, thudding against the rug; a slim, white box with a shiny logo. Dumbly, I pick it up and stare at it with the same sort of blank expression that Gideon had worn when I asked if he would like to take a photograph of us, all because I am staring at a _brand-new phone_.

In a rush of excitement, I tear the box open and hold it up, this slim, black little phone – _mine_ , I think happily, my very own phone. Ruth had mentioned it this morning, but I didn’t think I would get it so _soon_ and especially given there was no real occasion for something like this, not a birthday or for Christmas, nothing like that. Then I notice the small, yellow sticky-note taped against the backside of the box, which has a string of phone numbers with names attached for each person written across it. Then, written right at the bottom: ‘ _Ruth thought you would like this one – SP._ ’

I look over each name and number in this small list, which includes Fangs, Toni, Ruth – and, of course, Sweet Pea himself his number written in the largest scrawl. I turn on the phone and let it charge, changing the rest of my clothes into pyjamas and then hopping onto my bed, feeling as light as a feather with how much my heart seems to flutter and my stomach swirls with warmth. I type out my first message and hit send, smiling to myself.

‘ _Thank you, Sweet Pea – Mila’_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	7. chapter seven

**_chapter seven: if i try to get close_ **

* * *

 

In the morning, Rosie is quiet; she pushes around colourful cereal with a limp spoon held in an equally limp hand, each shred melting into blobs of saturated chunks, because she is too distracted. Ruth cradles a phone between her shoulder and ear while she rushes around to collect the scattered clothing in the bedrooms, dashes downstairs into the kitchen to pack lunches, all while she speaks with Jughead’s main social-worker – _he is doing just fine, the girls adore him, really_ – because she must maintain the pretence that he is still here and not at Sunnyside.

Slowly, Rosie scoots out from her table and then trails upstairs. Rosie is hardly ever silent. She stomps, she jumps – she had a phase the week before last in which she thought she could use echolocation like a bat, and so she used to let out sudden screams with her eyes clamped shut, reassuring us that she knew exactly where the armchair was based on the sound. Then she would blindly bump against the sofa or trip into the table. So, Rosie has never been much of a wallflower.

I drop my slice of toast, brushing off crumbs from my lap while I stand and march into the hall. Ruth is still in the living-room, promising that Jughead has had perfect attendance at Southside High and that he will certainly be here for his next meeting, scheduled for the end of the month. I remind myself to tell him about it. I push open the bedroom door with ‘ROSIE’ pasted in chunky, glittering letters against its wood, little flower-stickers dotted all around. She sits on her bed, plucking at loose threads from the marine-blue jumper which Ruth had chosen for her to wear today. Rosie has a tendency to choose flimsy, thin shirts even if the wind howls against her windowpanes in the morning. Ruth, eternally diplomatic, selects her jumpers or coats for the _walk_ to school and just hopes that Rosie will not tear it off once she reaches the school.

“Hey, Rosie,” I smile. I plop myself at the end of her bed. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she answers; but her shoulders are dipped inward, her lips held in a small pout. I am almost amused by her sullenness if only because she is useless at hiding her emotions. She had only slipped from Ruth’s watchful eye because of this whole Jughead thing. “I’m okay.”

I hum a small, uncertain sound. “Okay. But you _do_ remember that Ruth told us we should always tell the truth, right?”

Indignant, she glares at me, those rich curls flopping against her forehead and a small crinkle held between her furrowed eyebrows. “I _am_ telling the truth.”

“Is that why you look so sad, then?”

She blinks, shifting around uncomfortably. “I just-…If I tell you, will you tell Ruth?”

Really, I would like to promise Rosie that I will never tell Ruth, but some part of me thinks that it would hurt her more if I made a promise which I then had to break. “That depends, Rosie.”

She chews at her lip, holds it between her small, pearly teeth and then releases it. “You know how Ruth and I went over to the park on the Northside, yesterday?”

_Oh, boy_. _The Northside_. “Yeah?”

“There was this other little girl there, in the playhouse. She said-…Well, she said I was dirty because I’m from the Southside, and then she said that Ruth only looks after me because she _has_ to look after me – she said her Mommy wants _her_ , but mine doesn’t want _me_. I wanted to push her away because she was blocking the door and I couldn’t get out to go to Ruth – and then she said that I couldn’t push her even if I _wanted_ to, because then she would tell her brother and he would call the people in charge of us, and they would take me away from Ruth and you and I-…” - her glassy stare finally cracks, small tears pouring onto reddened cheeks – “… and I like it here.”

“Oh, Rosie,” I mumble softly, holding my arms out for her.

She scrambles across her blankets and practically knocks me over with her full weight. I let her curl against me, let her sob and sob until she is coated in snot and ruddy skin, her fists scrunched into my shirt. Gently, I brush through her springy curls, soothe her hot cheeks with my cold hands and rock her just a little, because she really cries _hard_ , but soon settles into an almost comatose state, in which she simply stares ahead, occasionally sniffling.

 “Now are you gonna tell Ruth?” she asks; her voice is hoarse, and it sounds so much like mine that I almost smile, but the sadness in her takes it away in a short breath. I think it over. Rosie attends a school here on the Southside, and she might not ever come across this girl unless Ruth takes her to the park at the exact same moment that this other girl appears again, but I figure I could tag along with her and keep an eye out.

“Do you want me to tell her?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbles. “Will she be mad?”

“Probably,” I answer honestly. “But not with you, Rosie – because what that girl said _isn’t true_. You’re not dirty. At least, I don’t think so-…” – I lift her arm and pretend to sniff at her, which makes her shriek with laughter and buck against me because she is incredibly ticklish – “…and I don’t think _I’m_ dirty either, right? And Ruth definitely wants you. _I_ want you here, too. That’s all that should matter, okay? You and I got really lucky getting to stay here with Ruth, didn’t we?”

She nods feebly, still caught between relief and sadness. I suppose she feels better for having said it all, but sad because it still hurts. She hesitates for a second, lips scrunched as if to hold in the words, but then she says, “Her brother was there, too. He didn’t say anything to me, but he _looked_ mean. We saw him before, outside that other shop, when Ruth let us buy our journals and I got to colour-…”

_Reggie_ , I realise. I hear a faint ringing in my eardrums, like the tinny whine of that bell in school. I recognise it well, that flood of sound which rushes through me, hot like blood, hot like anger. In the months before my Grandmother had passed, that sound used to come before I would punch something, before I cracked my fist against concrete or bone, whichever was closest, and whichever hurt the most. Now it comes again, and I count out my numbers like I usually do, but it doesn’t seem to soothe me much – that rattle is still there even once Rosie seems reassured and playful, slipping on her jumper and hopping around, all that hurt forgotten for now.

It is not forgotten for me, though.

I pull away from her and slip into my bedroom, holding deathly still, thinking over her words, her puffy face streaked in tears etched into my brain; _she would tell her brother and he would call the people in charge of us, and they would take me away from Ruth and you and I…and I like it here_.

In a sudden bolt of aggression, I clench my fist and slam it into my wall. I feel the rip of skin, splintered and torn, the fresh spill of blood and the release of all that pressure once my bones seem to rattle, all through my arm and into my skull, smothering that aching noise. I hold still again, straining for the sound of Ruth and Rosie, who might have heard me. Nothing follows, and I let out a shaky breath, relieved.

ii

Gripping the handlebars of my bicycle, I look at the bridge which leads into the Northside, scrunching my fists so tight that the cracked, dried blood which crusts my knuckles splits and oozes new trickles of blood. I want to find Northside High, find Reggie and kick his skull in, then pull him back into the Southside and drop him in front of Rosie, rip open his shattered jaw so that an apology can pour out between mouthfuls of copper warmth. Still, I know that Rosie would be more scared than grateful and I’m not thinking like I should be – when I _should_ be at Southside High right now, in a dull class of Math followed by English. I know that the first bell would have rattled its tinny, whiny tune almost forty minutes ago.

I know that I should be there, because I promised Ruth that I was better now, that all of the stuff she had read about me in my files was another Mila; not me, not this Mila, but yet now I am stood here in this street with a bicycle and bloody knuckles and I can’t really see the difference anymore.

I feel a vibration against my pocket and find my phone, realising I already have four messages. The first comes from Toni, who asks if I am really ditching her for the day – but the second is filled with a lot more concern and she asks if I am sick, because she can make a _mean_ chicken-soup, and _could you just please just answer now, Mila_ -…Then, the third message comes from Sweet Pea: _You’re freaking Toni out. Answer your phone_. Finally, I flip to the fourth and last message, and all of that anger fizzles out once I realise that Sweet Pea has sent another message which reads, quite simply: _You’re freaking me out. Please answer_.

I release a slow, tired sigh and rub my hands over my face. I type out a quick reply to Sweet Pea: _Sorry. On my way._

I take another glance at that lush, dense shrubbery which coats the Northside and cuts off once it reaches the Southside bridge. I feel the sting of my knuckles for the first time; the sting of regret soon follows.

iii

Slipping into our third class of the morning, I feel the prickle of their stares and shrink into my seat. Jughead glances at me, his eyebrows furrowed with that same crinkle that Rosie always has once she is in deep contemplation. I avoid the questioning stare of Sweet Pea, the mixture of relief and worry which still plagues Toni. She is evidently relieved that I came to school, but she knows that I had a reason for being late. I feel as if the class drags for hours. Yet, somehow too soon enough, the bell rattles.

I stand. Before I can flee, I am instantly surrounded by my friends. Sweet Pea crosses his arms. Toni drops her hands flat onto my table and leans forward. “You really let me sit through an hour of Math _alone_?”

“Uh, not to be ‘ _that guy_ ’, but _we_ were there,” Fangs mutters, glancing at her with a mildly offended look on his face.

I would have laughed if Toni had even loosened up just a little and smiled. Instead, she stands straight, crossing her arms, mimicking Sweet Pea. “Well, Mila?”

“I just woke up a little late. Rough morning.”

I smile at them all and then shift around them, walking into the hall. I can tell they are not appeased, but from the scuff of shoes and leather, I know that they follow anyway, toward our next class, but my stomach churns because I know that I might need to tell them after all – especially with that narrowed stare Toni shoots throughout the next class, her lips pursed. I look over at Sweet Pea and find myself surprised that he does not look so intense, like Toni. Instead, he smiles, but it is nothing like his usual smile; it is far gentler, reassuring.

Then his eyes drop and his smile falters; he has seen my right hand, swollen and sore. He looks at me, but I flinch from his stare, flinch from its intensity and furl the cuff of my coat around my hand, ashamed. I can feel him, feel that pleading look: _please answer_.

iv

Before myself and the others file into the canteen, he catches me. I am shuffled into an emptied classroom, an apparent habit of ours now to find a secluded place in Southside High to discuss our issues. I feel swallowed beneath his large frame because he looms close, his expression clouded in a blend of concern and frustration because I attempt to brush this off once more. He reaches for my wrist, catches it gently, peels off the cuff and drinks in my knuckles. He never touches the broken skin, but instead lightly tugs me out of the classroom without a word.

He brings me toward the backside of the school, its darkened halls splattered in artificial whiteness from a broken light, which flickers and flickers. He ducks beneath a splintered piece of wood which covers a door and then pulls at me to follow him. I bend beneath the wooden splint and find that we stand in an old, unused bathroom, the doors of the stalls torn off and cracked, its tiles smashed into dust. Still, he approaches a sink and turns the faucet, which sputters out a blackened liquid which soon brightens into clearer water.

He pulls my hand beneath this warm stream and holds it once I try to pull away because of the harsh sting; he dares to smile and mutters, “Good lesson.”

“What?”

“Good lesson,” he repeats, looking directly into my eyes. “Whenever I punch something and I gotta clean up my hand and it stings badly, I think – _good lesson_.”

“If it was such a good lesson, you wouldn’t need to say it more than once, Sweet Pea. You would have stopped punching the first time,” I grumble.

He smooths a thumb across my knuckles and seems apologetic this time when I wince, letting my hand drop and flicking off the faucet. He leans against the sink, half-sitting on its edge. “Yeah. Thought the same thing when I put that dent in Ruth’s wall – _your_ wall. I thought it was stupid of me. But that was _after_ I did it – when you’re about to punch something, you’re not _thinking_ at all. That’s the point. So, now, we’re in the after-part of you punching something, Mila. What are you thinking now?”

I am mildly surprised by his maturity, the way he looks at me so bluntly, as if there is nothing else in the world right now apart from us, apart from _this_. I swallow and feel my voice crack all over again. “You’re gonna think it’s dumb.”

“What does it matter what I think?”

“It matters to me,” I mumble.

He straightens, momentarily looking away from me before he meets my eyes. “Well, you saw me lose my cool – more than once, actually.”

I shrug. “Just-…Rosie and Ruth went over to the Northside at the weekend, to visit the park. And Rosie said this girl was picking on her because she’s from the Southside – she called her some names, but then she said that if Rosie tried to fight back, she’d just get her brother to call social services and Rosie would be taken away from Ruth. And I know her brother. Sort of. I met him once when I first visited the Northside.”

Sweet Pea loses that calm, neutral expression; his mouth tightens, jaw clenches. He stands from the sink and I am thrown by his height again, stepping backward to look up at him. Lowly, he asks, “And what happened when you met him?”

I shrug again, more because I am not sure what else to do with myself. “It was just him and some friends trying to make fun of me, that’s all-…”

“What _happened_?”

“They stood around me, asked why I was bothering to buy notebooks because-…. because there was no need for them here in the Southside and-…” - I hesitate, but Sweet Pea steps closer, his chest almost bumping against mine, ensuring that speak, and so I reluctantly continue – “…And that Southside students couldn’t read, anyway. Couldn’t write, either. He said that I was too defensive of the Southside, so I must be shacking up with some Serpent and-…that an adopted Southsider is the same as any other Southsider. But look, Sweet Pea-…”

“Look, _what_ , Mila?” he interrupts furiously. “You were in Riverdale how long, and they were already _harassing_ you?”

“I was fine. I’m still fine.”

“Yeah, you’re fine. _That’s_ why your hand is all busted up, right? So, what were you gonna do?”

“What?”

“You didn’t turn up this morning. So, what were you gonna do? Go over to the Northside?” he asks. I flush, and his surprise seeps through, realising that he had guessed correctly, his mouth held apart in shock. He had been leaned toward me, bent closer to my height, but he straightens now. “Mila, were you really-…”

“Yeah.”

“You could have been badly hurt.”

“I _have_ been in fights before, you know.”

“Yeah, against how many guys? Those Bulldog jackasses might be dumb, but they do know how to throw a punch.” He snorts bitterly and adds, “I should know.”

“I wasn’t thinking,” I admit. I still feel embarrassed. “I just-…I was really upset. I wasn’t _thinking_ , Sweet Pea, and I just thought if I went over there…”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

I blink at him, startled by his frank tone.

He continues, “If you had cracked open a Northsider’s skull, your social-worker would have heard about it within the hour. Even if I hate to say it, what that brat said was _right_ – one call from her brother after that, and you’d have been taken out of here in an instant, Mila. Your word against a Northsider? You wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“I didn’t think,” I repeat. “I was just-…”

“Trying to protect your family,” he supplies softly.

I nod weakly, looking down at the tiles because my eyes seem determined to swell with tears that I do not want to shed. _Family_. I had not been with Ruth and Rosie that long, but for someone like me, who has only ever felt _temporary_ – well, it means a lot more to be here with them than anywhere else that I had ever been.

Sweet Pea surprises me all over again. He steps forward and wraps his arms around me, lets me lean against his chest. I stiffen, initially unsure of myself, but his heartbeat is there, and his arms feel safe, so I allow myself this moment. I mumble into his shirt, “You’re nicer than most people think, Sweet Pea.”

“People think I’m not nice, huh?” he laughs; the sound rumbles in his chest, and I blush because of how warm it makes me feel. “Where do they think I got the nickname _Sweet Pea_ from, then?”

Once we pull apart, he must notice the pink which stains my cheeks because that smirk blossoms on him again. I am glad he doesn’t mention it aloud, but he does let me wash my knuckles some more, and he finds a roll of toilet-paper which he tears into shreds to pat against my hands and dry them off. He is very careful, he avoids the sorest parts. I suppose he has enough practice with his own, after all of those punches into concrete or skulls; whatever hurts the most.  

“Thank you, Sweet Pea,” I say quietly.

Sweet Pea stands close. He smiles, too, before his eyes dart toward my lips; he leans forward so suddenly, his lips against mine in such a brief second, that I hardly react – but then, his hands find my waist, and I finally understand that this is _real_ – not just a small peck, but a _kiss_. I feel the softness of his lips and the smile which comes when he feels me return it, my hands lifting to rest against his chest.

Once he pulls away, I feel dizzy and breathless; maybe that is why I blurt, “Was that awful?”

Confused, he asks, “What do you mean?”

“I’ve never kissed anyone before,” I explain, my skin aflame. “I thought-…Maybe-…”

“It was perfect, Mila,” he laughs, pulling me against him again. “Good lesson.”

“Good lesson,” I repeat, grinning against his chest.

 

 


	8. chapter eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I am back with another chapter. As I mentioned before, I took great liberties with Sweet Pea's background. It's never really explained and if it is, then it will probably contradict mine eventually but there's not much I can do about it. I always took that explanation that Sweet Pea was meant to represent the path Jughead 'could have taken' - can't remember where I read that. Because of this, I made his family reflect Jughead's but contrast them in that his parents were not as nice. They won't be featured anyway so I hope that doesn't bother anyone. Anyway, on with the story! Please review if you can! :)
> 
> P.S: I also wanted to try and make their relationship a bit more natural in this chapter in that they actually discuss it lol.

 

* * *

**_chapter eight: the sound of the leaves_ **

* * *

**i**

Somehow, it seems as if Toni just  _knows_. She tears off the crust of her sandwiches and glances between myself and Sweet Pea with deep contemplation. Sweet Pea sits alongside me and laughs at Birdie, whose bruises are still present and made of a splotchy bluish colour. Birdie tells them about how he had skid from his motorcycle at the weekend, thrown over the handlebars into a pile of mud, which is infinitely funnier for the boys than if Birdie had simply fallen. Then I feel Sweet Pea rest his hand against my thigh, just a light touch and nothing more than that – almost like a little secret between us, but he had never said if he wants this secret or not, we had simply kissed and left the bathroom with flushed cheeks and giddy smiles.

I glance at him and he raises an eyebrow in question, ensuring that I am fine with his touch and I quickly nod. He looks away, because Birdie has now clambered onto the bench to demonstrate his fall, hands held upward to grip unseen handlebars. I blush when I look at my thigh and the gentle splay of his large hand. I hate that I blush so much and so easily over something so small, but it still means a lot to me. Sweet Pea has always seemed so wild, temperamental that I had never really considered him to be romantic at all, but he seems to be, in his little touches and smiles.

Toni has a smile, too – more of a smirk, actually. She tilts her head toward Sweet Pea and I burn red even more. I attempt a cool shrug, but she snorts and shakes her head. I know that it was probably useless to pretend. Toni just  _knows_.

**ii**

In the hallway, she bumps against my shoulder and slows her pace so that she can walk beside me. The Serpents stroll ahead of us. There is little rush because the next class is science. Most of the Serpents joke that this class has the highest attendance for Ghoulies, because they think the section about chemistry will help them in their drug-labs. Sometimes, I am not sure if they are really kidding around – there actually  _are_  a lot more Ghoulies in this class, far more than any other.

Emerging from another hall, Jughead sidles into the group and seems to skirt around its edges, not quite a part of us, but not quite separate. He sinks his hands into his pockets and struggles to find a spot. I feel bad for him, torn between his friends on the Northside and his newer friends here on the Southside. I might not like the Northside, but I do like Jughead. So, I reach out and pull him toward myself and Toni.

Toni bumps me again and says, "We should have another sleepover, you know."

I look at her teasing grin and groan. " _Toni_ -…"

"What's so funny?" Jughead asks, looking between us.

"Oh, nothing, Jug," Toni replies coyly. "We just have so much to do – braid each other's hair, pillow fights, discuss our  _crushes_ -…"

"Toni," I repeat.

She must catch my withered expression, because she decides to spare me and pretends as if she was thinking of Jughead and his recent issues with his girlfriend, Betty. I never even knew he had any issues with her, but it seems he tells Toni a lot of things that he keeps quiet from the rest of us. I look between them, now, their light flirtation, the easiness of their movements toward each other, unaware of their closeness. Jughead walks with an easy slouch and Toni follows suit, although I doubt they realise that they are mimicking one another. Jughead mentions that Betty seems worried she will ' _lose_ ' him to the Southside and especially to the Serpents. Toni reaches out to squeeze his hand and smiles sympathetically.

The male Serpents turn and notice Jughead, but do not make fun of him or even push him away – there has been some weird tension between them all, but then Sweet Pea makes a small effort to include Jughead, joking about his beanie or something stupid, clapping the smaller boy on the shoulder and pulling him toward the boys. I smile at Sweet Pea once he glances back at me and he returns it, pushing Jughead to sit between us all, like a barrier between him and the Ghoulies. They had done the same for me on my first day, but they seem even more protective of Jug considering he had already been beaten so badly by their rivals.

Jughead grins at their jokes, he even makes a couple of his own witty responses that earn him low whistles and laughter, even more slaps on the back that he takes with flushed pride, his eyes dropping down to his paper once the teacher enters, but his smile remains.

Maybe Betty has good reason to worry.

**iii**

After school, I stick around with Mags and Toni while I wait for Ruth to collect me. I sit on the concrete stairs outside of the school with them and pluck at the threads poking from my scuffed sneakers. I am not sure where Sweet Pea went but I had seen him and Fangs messing around by the lockers earlier. Mags tells us about her own romance with another Serpent named Fuzzy – another unexplained nickname from the Serpents, because I had seen the boy around and there was not really anything  _fuzzy_  about him, but Mags assures us that he is really very sweet despite his eternally sullen mood. Mags has dated a lot of boys and I listen with rapt attention because I wonder if I can learn stuff from her.

Mags tells us about her most recent date with Fuzzy, cruising around the Southside and then parking out by the woods for some fun. She wiggles her eyebrows and starts to tell us exactly what kind of fun and it makes me –  _panic_. I am not even sure what it is that worries me exactly. I start to think about Sweet Pea and what he expects, if he  _expects_  anything, if I am meant to be ready for the stuff that Mags has done, and it makes me feel weirdly dizzy-…

"Mags," Toni cuts in, "I am sure you and Fuzzy had a  _fantastic_  night, but maybe we should keep it a little P-G for now. Especially because I do not ever want to think of Fuzzy like  _that_ , thank you."

For a moment, I wonder if Toni had been uncomfortable too, but once Mags continues to chat about their night planned in the Whyte Wyrm, Toni shoots me a glance as if checking that I'm okay and I realise she only did that for me. I smile gratefully at her and she nods. I am more thankful for Toni than ever, filled with a sudden rush of affection for her. Still, I feel worried about what Mags had said  _before_  she was cut off, and it makes my stomach churn.

It was just a kiss between myself and Sweet Pea and we had never even agreed on dating like Fuzzy and Mags, but I start to think about what would happen if we did. Has he been with other girls? Does he… _know_  more about it than I do?

The school doors open and shut in a gentle whoosh. I glance up and find Sweet Pea himself standing there, grinning at me. Toni crosses her arms over her chest and looks between us, making me even more self-conscious than ever. I hear a loud honking, relieved to find Ruth there, waiting for me. I jump at the thought of escaping them all, just for some time to think things over,  _alone_. I smile weakly at him and quickly snatch my schoolbag from the ground. He takes a step forward, right for me – I hop off the stairs and mumble, "Bye, guys, Ruth is here!"

I blush again but not from that warm feeling I had at lunch. Instead, I blush from embarrassment because I had been so unsure of myself and rattled by what Mags had said. I know that Sweet Pea watches me. I glimpse his confusion once I slip into Ruth's car and glance at him before I pretend to fiddle with my seatbelt as she pulls out of the parking lot.

**iv**

That night, Sweet Pea texts me around eight. It is a simple, direct little message. It says: Can we talk?

I pretend as if I never saw it and continue to watch some cartoons with Rosie, but my skin prickles with anxiety and I can hardly focus on the colourful cats jumping around one another and singing little tunes on a piano. I have never felt so –  _so_ weird before, never thought so much about a boy or a crush or whatever this is meant to be. I feel even worse that I ignore him. I'm worried that I will say something stupid. Some part of me worries that he will say he was never interested at all, that the kiss was something spontaneous and he doesn't see the big deal. I wonder if that would be better.

Yet I know that if he ever said that, it would crush me, because I like Sweet Pea more than I realised until he had really kissed me in that bathroom and I overthink everything he had ever said or done before that moment.

**v**

I slip into the kitchen to make myself a drink. Ruth sits beneath a filtered, pale yellow light from the bare-bulb overhead, washing out her skin in its coolness. She ticks off documents for myself and Jughead. She glances at me but remains silent while I pull out a glass and reach into the fridge. She is quiet all the way through, just until I reach the arch that leads into the living-room. Right then, she says, "You should probably talk to him."

Startled, I look at her, my hands suddenly clammy. "Uh, what?"

"Sweet Pea," she answers simply. She looks at me directly and then laughs, shaking her head. "I wasn't blind today, Mila. I mean, the parking lot of Southside High is not that big. I saw you run away from Sweet Pea like he had the plague. Don't you like him?"

I am stunned that she had noticed so much and said nothing until now. Then again, Ruth seems to be a lot like Toni. Maybe Toni picked up on this stuff from her throughout her time of staying in this house whenever her uncle kicked her out. Despite the surprise, I am almost relieved that I have somebody I can talk to about it. I take the seat across from her and she pushes aside those papers, the ever-growing pile that has come ever since Jughead arrived.

"I just-…I don't know what to do," I admit, shifting awkwardly.

"What do you mean?"

"Like – I've never…never  _dated_  anybody before. I think that's what Sweet Pea wants but I'm not sure, because he never said it. Then there was this girl Mags who was talking her boyfriend and I got kind of freaked out by what she was saying because-…"

Ruth smiles at my rushed, breathless explanation and then nods, pursing her lips. "Well, you said you're not sure what Sweet Pea wants. But did you ever think about what  _you_  want, Mila?"

I blink at her. "Kind of? I just thought…if I'm with a boy…Am I supposed to-… _know everything_?"

Ruth laughs lightly. I am glad that she doesn't laugh  _at_ me, but it seems more fond and amused than anything. "Do you think everybody else just ' _knows everything_ ', kiddo? Take me, for example. First night that Rosie arrived, I didn't know what to do with her. It seems obvious, right? I'd read every book about how to care for a child, how to do this and how to do that, but then Rosie was standing  _right there_  in front of me, looking up at me, and I just blanked out. I let her eat ice-cream on her first night because I was panicking so much. Don't tell her that, though. If a kid senses fear, they'll run with it."

I snort at her, lowering in my seat. "I just really like him, Ruth."

Ruth considers me for a moment. "You know, that night that Jughead got beat up and you and Sweet Pea brought him here – I could tell Sweet Pea really likes you too. He kept looking at you, making sure you were okay. He told you about his Dad, Mila. Do you know how long it was before Sweet Pea even  _talked_ to me, properly? He trusts you. He defended you the day after, tried to convince me that you shouldn't be in trouble for any of it. And he likes you too."

"So, I'm overreacting?"

"No. No, you're experiencing what a lot of other people do when they realise that they like someone. Like them in a way that's more than just a simple crush. And it seems scary at first, but that's why you need to  _talk_  to the other person. When Sweet Pea gives his heart, he gives it all. No holding back. Look at all he does for the Serpents. If you ignore him and pretend this isn't happening, then you'll be making sure that nothing ever  _does_ happen. Now, if that's what you want, that's fine. But I don't think it's what you want. Is it, Mila?"

I shake my head. "No, it's not."

"Then you ask him to talk and you explain this stuff. You're allowed to feel what you feel, Mila. You're allowed to set boundaries and be clear about it, too. Besides, you'd be surprised how mature Sweet Pea can be."

I lean backward against my chair and smile at her. "Thanks, Ruth."

She nods and reaches out for those papers. "You should have more confidence in yourself, Mila. I know…with your Grandmother, you had a difficult time-…"

I don't want to talk about her. I swallow hard and glance at the clock by the door. I cut her off and blurt, "Ruth, could I go see him now?"

Ruth frowns, evidently aware of the late hour and even more aware that I want to evade a discussion about my Grandmother. "Mila, can't it wait-…"

"I can't do it over the phone and I really don't want to wait until tomorrow, Ruth. Please. I can cycle there and be back within the hour."

She huffs and rubs her forehead. "Honestly, you give a kid one pep-talk and they think they own the world."

"I sensed your fear," I smile at her.

She laughs. "All right. Fine. One hour – but Mila if you aren't back, I'll-…"

"One hour," I call out, rushing out for my bicycle.

**vi**

Whizzing through the dark, blackened streets of the Southside, I feel droplets of rain slip beneath the collar of my jacket and I shiver from the cold but soon warm from speeding toward the trailer park. Acid yellow clouds clot the streetlights, dense wisps splintered by the sheets of rain which eventually lightens into a faint drizzle. I skirt around the trailer park and drop my bicycle in the wet mud.

Jughead welcomes me with great bewilderment – and I am even more surprised to find Toni there, with Betty and another boy who quickly introduces himself as Kevin.  _From the Northside_ , he clarifies, and silence follows. I snort once he winces, seeming sheepish. I ask around for Sweet Pea, but it seems he was in a pretty sour mood and left with Fangs and Birdie earlier in the evening. I feign surprise at news of his bad mood, but I know I am more than likely the reason. I rush back out but pause in the doorway only to say, "See you soon, Kevin from the Northside!"

He lifts a hand to wave, still looking bashful at his botched introduction. "See you, Mila from the Southside."

I pick my bicycle up and ride out into the street, a little thrilled that he thought I was really a Southsider and not just some kid who had been placed there. Between streets, I realise that this has easily been my longest placement anywhere. Not just a tack pinned on a map; a real placement, a real… _home_. It makes me cycle just that little bit faster, until I spot a familiar figure bursting from a store, his leather jacket pickled in a saturated blue light, his smile even brighter. Fangs and Birdie are right behind him, falling out of the store in a fit of laughter. I feel the tension leave me slightly, if only because he must be in a better mood than I had thought.

I almost shout for him, but the boys turn toward another figure just a few feet away and march toward him. I figure it must be another Serpent, so I pull onto the curb and carefully place my bicycle against the brick wall of the grocery store, climbing off and walking down the street behind them. I think of what I might say to him – how to phrase it so it sounds less childish that I ignored him and his message, how to explain that I really  _do_  like him, but I have just never experienced anything like this and I think I will mess it up.

Sweet Pea looms tall, like always, but this time it means that I can't see the other kid behind him. I approach with a slower pace, worried when I see Sweet Pea reach out to push this kid. I wonder for a second if it might be Gideon, because he hardly seems to have much luck on either side of this town.

Then there is the glint of a knife.

I hold still; it feels as if my body fills with ice and then floods in heat, a clash of panic and fright, my brain unable to figure out what I should even  _do_  – because it is  _Sweet Pea_  who holds out the knife. Fangs and Birdie do the same, surrounding this other kid like a – a  _gang_ , I think stupidly, but that is what they always have been, and they never lied to me about it. They never lied about it – so why do I still feel so shocked and hurt by it?

I feel myself push toward them despite the numbed state of my thoughts, unable to focus on any one thing. In fact, I rush forward, wanting to pull that knife away from him. I bolt toward him and call out, "Sweet Pea!"

I reach them and grip his arm tightly to pull it down, just as this other kid takes a gun from his pocket.

Blood thunders in my eardrums. I feel the dryness of my mouth and the warm leather of Sweet Pea's jacket beneath my hand all at once, but it is such a distant feeling, like the echo of something  _real_. The redheaded boy looks down at me and swallows uncertainly, but the gun never drops. His hand trembles, his eyes dark and threatening. I really think he will do it, that he really  _will_  shoot – that he has it in him to do it.

Suddenly, I am gripped so tight by Sweet Pea that it is like a cold splash of water and I realise that Fangs and Birdie are already halfway down the street and I had been so scared that I had never even noticed it. Sweet Pea doesn't move until I do, my legs dumbly fumbling after him when he pulls at me. I look back at the redhead and watch him lower the gun. It doesn't make me feel any better.

**vii**

Birdie says he will get my bicycle for me, left behind in the rush. I never answer. I stare at near-constant patter of rain against a dumpster and it hits me that this is the second time I am in an alleyway with them, although Max is not here this time. I hope that the police will not make an appearance tonight. My heart still seems to thump in an endless flutter, my hands still trembling, aware of Sweet Pea pacing around like a wild creature trapped in a cage. Fangs takes one look at him and mumbles that he should help Birdie with the bicycle, and the pair of them scarper fast. I guess they take one glance at the way Sweet Pea clenches and unclenches his fists and they realise that it might not be worth the fallout to stick around. I can't seem to find the strength to stand, so I am stuck here with him anyway.

"Why were you even _there_?"

I tear my eyes from that patter of rain and look at him incredulously. "Excuse me?"

"What were you doing there? You see how late it is and where we were. So, you were –  _what_? Just cycling around, taking in all the picturesque sights that the Southside has to offer?"

I snort bitterly and shake my head. "I was looking for  _you_ , Sweet Pea. I went to Sunnyside, tried to find you. I couldn't, so I was cycling home, planning on just texting you to say that we could talk tomorrow. I saw you and decided we could talk then. I didn't realise you were in the middle of harassing some kid-…"

"Harassing? You saw that he was the one with the gun, right?"

"No, really? I must have missed it," I respond sarcastically.

"Don't play smart with me, Mila."

" _Or what_?"

He is about to shout, I can tell, but he flounders for words and then turns to kick at a dumpster, denting it with his boot. I roll my eyes and feel a sudden lick of sympathy for all those social-workers who had to deal with me in a tantrum. He turns, and all of the fight has left him. He collapses onto the ground alongside me and runs his hands through his hair, breathing heavily. His shoulder presses against mine and I am annoyed by how much I like the feeling.

"He was tagging," Sweet Pea says suddenly. I look at him, imploring him to continue. He swallows. "He was tagging on our turf. Warning the Black Hood. Must think he's a Southsider. No surprise there."

"So, you pull a  _knife_?"

"Yeah, and he pulled a gun!"

"Only after you pulled a knife, Sweet Pea!"

"You're defending that guy? Really?"

"He only pulled it because he was being threatened. If he hadn't pulled out that gun, would you have hurt him?" I ask quietly. "Was he  _right_ , Sweet Pea?"

Sweet Pea looks at me, his skin pale and flushed. "Look what happened to Jughead-…"

"That wasn't the Northsiders. Ghoulies did that."

"Yeah, but if Northsiders had found Jug or any other Southsider by themselves, they would have done the same thing.  _Hurt them_."

"So, what? It just goes around and around in a circle. One group hurts the other, one group hurts the other, over and over. Where does it end?"

There is a glassiness in his stare that surprises me. I start to understand that he had probably been just as scared tonight. His hands tremble, too, and I reach out to take his in mine, smoothing a thumb over his knuckles like he had done for me in the bathroom. He looks at our hands held together and says, "I don't want it to be like that. But I don't see any other way in this town."

"Start by not pulling the knife, Sweet Pea. What if he had-…If he had really used that gun? On me, you, Fangs or Birdie? If I hadn't been there, I wouldn't have been able to apologise for being so weird today. And then your family-…"

He scoffs. "What, my Dad? He'd say  _good riddance_."

"Don't say that," I whisper, hurt by the bitter resignation in his voice.

"You remember Jughead's first day at Southside? When I left the classroom?" he asks. I nod, and he mutters, "My Dad text me to get my stuff and get out. He knew I got picked up by the police the night before. When I left you in that laundromat and let the police chase me. He heard about it and said he had had enough. He sure showed me he did, anyway."

"He – He showed you?" I repeat. I think of Sweet Pea that morning, after the police, after the chase. He had been injured and he said it was from the police. Now, I look at his shoulders drawn tight and feel his hands shake in mine and I ask, "Sweet Pea, did your Dad hurt you, too?"

He shrugs. "What does it matter?"

"It  _matters_ ," I reply fiercely. "You matter – to me, to Toni, to Ruth, to all the Serpents."

"I'm touched," he grins. I am stunned that he can joke around, even now, but he leans back against the brick wall behind us and seems calmer, much calmer than he had been earlier. I wonder if this is just what shock does to you after such a fright, because his mood shifts into a resigned serenity when he flatly asks, "Why were you there?"

"I told you."

"You said you wanted to talk," he nods, his eyes focused on a broken pipe across the alleyway. "About what?"

"Now you're playing with me," I mutter. "I wanted to apologise for today."

"Do you regret the kiss?"

I look at him, eyes wide, but he never looks at me. He just stares at that pipe, and the glassiness in his eyes never goes away. I still hold his hands in mine. It feels better like that. "No. No, I don't. I just panicked because…I have never liked anybody in the way that I like you."

My words pull him from his catatonic attitude, his body pushing away from the brick wall. He blinks at me, confused. "What, you never had a boyfriend before?"

"Are you surprised?"

"No, I just-…Well, yeah, actually. I thought you just kissed me and then regretted it-…"

"First,  _you_ kissed  _me_ ," I smile at him. He relaxes, rolling his eyes. "Second, I just…panicked. Like I told you. And then Mags was talking about stuff she did with Fuzzy – you gotta explain his nickname to me, by the way – and I don't know, I just thought-…"

" _Stuff_ , huh?" he smirks. "Let me guess, she told you about how they went out to those woods where all the young kids go to make out and  _stuff_?"

It returns in all its fiery vengeance, my blush. I pull my hands from his and brush my hair away from my face, attempting to cover my cheeks, but Sweet Pea smiles and reaches out for one of my hands, pulling me toward him again.

"You know how I know about that  _stuff_ , Mila? Fuzzy told us about it, too. I heard  _all_  about it. But, you know, I didn't really think about it that much because Fuzzy always talks like that about every girl he's with. I know Mags doesn't care. She's in it for a bit of fun and if something serious comes out of it, then I'm sure she'd be happy, too. But for me -…. Look, Mila, I get why it freaked you out. But it was a kiss."

I prepare for him to say it.  _It was spontaneous, I don't see the big deal_.

"And I'd like for there to be more – not that stuff, I mean, this is kind of-…I just meant if you wanted to go out-…"

I look at him and find he is almost blushing, too. He looks sheepish and scuffs the ground. I smile and say, "This is hard for you too, right?"

"You bet," he replies, letting out a deep breath. He meets my eyes and we suddenly burst out laughing at ourselves. Maybe from the stress of this day – this  _night_ , with the gun on top of it all. Maybe just from the relief in knowing that we are both as awkward as each other about this. "Look, Mila – I like you. A lot. I thought after that kiss that maybe I had read the whole thing wrong and you were regretting it. But if that's not the case, then I'd like to ask you out more…formally."

"Formally? So, in an alleyway instead of a bathroom?"

He laughs loudly, a very  _real_  laugh from Sweet Pea. "Yeah, exactly. Mags and Fuzzy can move as fast as they want, Mila. But you and me – we don't have to do that. We could start slow. Just go for a drink."

"You still owe me two, anyway," I mumble, grinning at him. "Remember?"

"My wallet sure remembers." His smile makes me feel like oddly giddy again.

"I'd like to start like that, Sweet Pea. I'm sorry I was acting so weird."

He shrugs his shoulders and squeezes my hand. "It's not weird. It's normal if you've never been with someone to not know what to do. It's not that much different than when you're with a friend."

"So, you and Fangs-…"

"No," he cuts off, pulling me against him when I laugh at his scowl. "Okay, that sounded better in my head. You hang out because you like the person and you act like you always do. Then, sometimes, it's like this." He presses his lips against mine, and I find I am not as nervous this time. I don't immediately go blank. I respond to him, push myself toward him and let him take the lead. When he pulls away, he is grinning. "Exactly like that."

"Okay. I can get used to that."

"Good. Because I'm not really like Fuzzy. I don't want to just mess around, Mila. I meant it when I said I like you. We'll always go as slowly as you want to, all right?"

"Thanks, Sweet Pea," I smile at him. It is almost easy to forget about the rest of this night when he smiles back at me and makes my heart thump in a way that isn't from the fear of another kid brandishing a weapon at us. I want to forget about it, but it lingers there, between us. "Sweet Pea, I was really scared tonight."

His hand is tight around mine. His voice is suddenly croaky and tight. "Yeah. I know. I'm sorry that happened."

"I was scared for  _you._ "

He stares at me, seeming surprised again. It always seems to surprise him. "Don't be. I can handle myself. That won't happen again, anyway."

"How can you be so sure?" I ask. He looks away from me. I lean toward him. " _Sweet Pea_?"

"The guys got your bicycle," he replies, standing up. He lets my hand fall and approaches Birdie and Fangs who I hadn't noticed until they were just beside us. He takes the bicycle from them and leads it toward me. "Come on, I'll walk you home."

**viii**

Stood in front of the fence of my house, I reach up to peck Sweet Pea on the cheek and grin when he mocks my height. I still jump in surprise when the front door opens, and Ruth stands there, surrounded in a halo of orange light. I smile weakly at her, knowing that I am half-an-hour over the curfew she had placed on me, but she crosses her arms and tilts her head. She calls out, "You shouldn't walk home this late at night by yourself, Sweet Pea. There's a place on the couch for you here if you want it."

He looks down at me. I can tell that if this had been any other night, he would probably have shrugged off her concern and walked all the way to Sunnyside by himself. But he seems tired and still more frazzled that he might admit. I would prefer to know he is safe, too.

"Stay, Sweet Pea," I urge. "We can walk to school tomorrow with Jughead."

"Oh, joy," he mutters, throwing his head back. "Jughead, as if I don't see enough of him  _at_  school, I can see him  _on the way_ to school."

"You seemed friendly enough today."

"Yeah, well, can't kick a guy when he's down. That's the Ghoulies' job."

" _Sweet Pea_!"

"Hey, I'm freezing my butt off over here! Are you staying, Sweet Pea?" Ruth calls out.

He looks at me and grins. "Yeah. I'll stay."


	9. chapter nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> angst angst angst

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am finally back! i wanted to explain that i recently started my job and i just finished exams so i was a little slower with this chapter. it is as angst-filled as any regular riverdale episode complete with rain and some pop song that sounds happy but when you listen to the lyrics it's really edgy and deep. anyway...

** chapter nine: hey little girl **

His bedroom had been pretty bare, in the house that he had shared with his father. It had been painted in a pale, faded blue, pockmarked in dents and scuffs from enough fights, enough punches – he remembered the first dent, plastered between his wardrobe and bedpost, put there after his tenth birthday; it was never celebrated, anyway, not that birthday and not many others. In his new bedroom in Sunnyside, there are hardly any photographs of Sweet Pea when he was a boy, just a couple of flyaway snippets in an old album, barely enough to form more than a sketched outline of dark hair and a strange dip in the hollows of his cheeks, as if he had never smiled and the muscles had worn thin. Still, there are later photographs of a tall, lanky kid with floppy hair and hands locked around the waist of a small girl, whose mouth is wide in a scream and eyes crinkled in delight as he spins her around. _Bug_ , Sweet Pea explains. _My baby sister_.

He has a photograph of Bug on a drawer scattered with lighters and folded shirts. She is captured in a red, polka-dotted raincoat with shyness in her smile, small hands held together in front of her, head tilted to her left. His trailer is surrounded by all of the other Serpents’ trailers, surrounded in a soft cocoon of muffled noise, chatter and music from the strips of grass between each row where Serpents spent evenings languid and sat around on blankets. His trailer is bathed in a soft light, gentle warmth poured from orange lanterns and fairy-lights strung around posters, around the American-flag stretched against the back-wall of his room. He stands in front of it, no longer lanky, no longer with floppy hair – no Bug held in hands which he holds like she had, in that photograph, awkward and unsure of himself.

“Do you-…uh, do you wanna watch a film?” he asks.

I smile, perched upon his bed. “Are you nervous, Sweet Pea?”

He rolls his eyes in feigned offense. I catch the bob of his throat. “No. I was just glad that Ruth agreed that you could stay for a while after school and I-…I wanted to make it…nice.”

“Nice?”

He gestures around himself. “Yeah. I cleaned the place, tried to make it look-…” – he struggles for a moment and then shrugs, frustrated – “… _nice_.”

I note the folded sweaters once more, the boots neatly pushed beneath his bed; there is a worn, tattered old bear with matted fur and a coal button-shaped eyeball which hangs from a thread, the patch stitched into its stomach half-torn so that its stuffing falls out in clumps. I wonder if it had belonged to that lanky kid or little Bug, sometime before the Serpents and the soft-chatter-noise of Sunnyside. He crosses the trailer and collapses onto the bed alongside me, seeming a little embarrassed by his words, cheeks still coloured in pinkish remorse. I am still not too comfortable enough in myself to be bold, but I slip a hand toward his and warm beneath the smile that he gives me.

“I think it’s really nice here, Sweet Pea,” I tell him timidly. I am never sure just where my shyness comes from, around him, but it never seems to bother him. “I’d watch a film. What have you got?”

ii

Barely held together in strips of tape and stickers, his battered laptop is settled between us, rested on the folds of his blankets. Eventually, both of us melt together slowly, shoulders pressed against one another on his bed, our awkward fumbles soon forgotten. I slither my arms around one of his, intertwined, almost dozing toward the end of a zombie-flick made in the eighties and filled with strange characters, its plot almost nonsensical. I blink sleepily at the end-credits, made of harsh, spindly white letters stamped against black, the contrast of colours like blisters for my tired eyes. I glance up at Sweet Pea and find him still awake, but he has a smile on his face.

“What’s so funny?”

He looks down at me and shrugs. “Nothing. Just-…I like it when you’re here.”

I am silent for a moment, stunned. I smile, nestle against his arm again and blush madly, relieved that the film finishes in a blackened screen that shrouds us in darkness so that he cannot see it. I like it, too. He untangles himself just to turn off the laptop and flick the switch for the lights. I look at Bug contained in her photograph, a momentary still, stretched into eternity in his trailer. She has dark eyes, like him. She has burdened shoulders. Like him.

“My Mom took her to a place called Brooksfield. She likes it there. Sends me letters to tell me all about it,” Sweet Pea announces suddenly. I look at him in surprise and realise he has been watching me, looking at her photograph. He is still crouched in front of the bed, tucking his laptop beneath it. He reaches around it and pulls out a crumbled shoebox. “I keep them in here.”

I smile sadly at his morose expression. “I used to keep a shoebox. Just not for letters.”

“What did you put in there?”

“They used to make me do these-…anger management exercises when I was a kid. They give you a sheet with a bunch of questions like-…Like, ‘ _which smiley-face do you feel like today_ ’? And you had maybe four options: happy, sad, okay, confused.”

He watches me closely. “Which one were you the most?”

“Confused,” I answer. “And sad, sometimes. But mostly confused.”

“Because of all the changing around, different towns?” he asks.

Briefly, I hesitate. Only his eyes are soft in understanding, warm in empathy. So, I say, “Because of my Grandmother.”

He hesitates too. I never told him much about her, and he realises it now. “What was she like?”

I shrug and shake my head. “I loved her.”

“I know what that means, you know,” he tells me quietly. He falls backward onto his bottom, sits with knees drawn and elbows rested against them, hands dangled there. “I used to think that a lot about my Dad. _I love him_. It’s what you say every time they do something that makes you feel bad. Whenever they hurt you. You accept it because you say, _I love them_.”

I feel my skin prickle in heat, embarrassed. I feel caught out, somehow. “She wasn’t always bad. She just-…sometimes she said things that made me feel like…”

“Like you should pick the sad smiley-face on those exercise sheets, right?”

I blink at him, taken aback by both his bluntness and his measured assurance when I look at him, a bitter smile on his face. I swallow and mumble, “I just never understood why she said some of the things she did.”

He ducks his head. “Yeah. Me neither.”

“I think she got frustrated and nobody had ever given my Grandmother any sheets like they gave me, so she had nowhere else to put all that anger in her,” I snort.

“Yeah,” he echoes distantly. “I get that, too.”

iii

Sweet Pea watches me again, thoughtful and silent. He looks away, toward that photograph of Bug. I know enough about his father now to understand that he never had anywhere to put his anger except into Sweet Pea. One night, he had come home and found his father there, but his mother had packed her existence into a suitcase, packed Bug in there too and set off toward the closest bus-station. She called him at the end of that month and told him that he could join her and that she would call him soon. He never got that call. I am not even sure that he even waits for it, anymore. Once he explained it all, he was quiet, and then he said, _I love her_.  

iv

Peeling apart my curtains, I find the clouds are clotted in knots of black, swirls of blue, speckled in purplish sores; there will be a storm tonight, Ruth tells me, she wants me home before seven at most. I tell her that I am just bowling with Gideon and I should be a lot earlier than that. I haul my bicycle out into the hall, struggle into the garden and then clamber onto it before I drift along the streets, toward the main-street. Gideon is already there, dressed in a fitted blue shirt and beige pants. He perks up at the sight of me. I suppose he thought I might bail on him. I skid to a stop and lean against my handlebars with a smile.

“So, you turned up, huh? Ready for me to hand it to you in bowling?”

“Hand me a trophy once I win?” he replies easily. “Sure thing.”

While we ride into the Northside and mess around, I wonder just why Gideon never made friends in his part of town. He is skittish at first, like a wild animal, but he softens into a goofy, sarcastic little smart-mouth soon after – a lot like Jughead, just with better posture and better dress sense. In the bowling alley, he types dumb names for us into the machine and he racks up a winning-score with little difficulty.

Afterward, we drift between the machines dotted around, settle into racing-car seats and speed through pixelated streets. I convince him to play air-hockey and we pass the puck between one another with increasing competitiveness. I win a couple of tickets from that and use them to redeem a small, white teddy-bear with hearts stitched into its paws. I can afford one more plush toy and so I pluck out a unicorn for Rosie, who had not been best pleased that I was allowed to bowl without her today.

“Who are those for?” Gideon asks, sipping at a soda, its ice rattling as he walks alongside me.

“Rosie. She lives with me. And the other is-…Uh, for my boyfriend.” I blush at the word because I had never said it before, never even had a boyfriend to buy anything for, even it is just a toy from a bowling-alley.

Gideon nods. “Is he a Serpent?”

“You think because I’m on the Southside, it has to be a Serpent?” I ask. He raises an eyebrow and I huff. “Okay, fine. Yeah, he is. His name is Sweet Pea.”

Gideon nods again, seeming deep in thought. “I used to know him. Played together in that park on the Southside, before it became overgrown.”

“Maybe you could hang out with him again. Not in that park, I mean-…”

Gideon snorts at me. “Are you forgetting the part where the Southside kids don’t want me around? Northside blood, remember?”

“Forget that. You’re my friend, Gideon. Southside, Northside – doesn’t make a difference.”

“Thanks, Mila.” He bumps my shoulder gently and grins down at me. “Now, come on – there’s a mini-basketball hoop at that counter that I really want but I need some more tickets. So, another round of air-hockey?”

“You’re on!” I smile at him, stuffing my own plush toys into my backpack and rushing after him.

v

Green frost echoes outward into the emptiness of the parking lot; there are just a couple of cars around the side for the staff, but most of the other customers had left ahead of the heavy downpour predicted for this evening – and it comes in dense thickets, like sheets which batter against our skin. In the clatter of rain against concrete, I shout out a quick goodbye to Gideon who speeds off toward his own neighbourhood. In the dim light, I cycle toward the Southside and try to keep a neat line against the side of the street to avoid cars, although it is mostly quiet now.

I think of Rosie and wonder if she will want a film-night tomorrow. Sunday is a nice, calm day in which we usually sit on the couch and gorge ourselves on candy and a couple of _Disney_ films just to placate her. I dream of those heavy blankets and warmth while cycling beneath this bitter cold rain which bites at my skin and makes it hard to see. I still glimpse the outline of some trucks ahead of me, on a street just a couple of blocks from the bridge. I slow, confused when I realise there are multiple cars, sat around in a circle between the trucks, headlights focused on the silhouettes of bodies.

One body falls against the ground. I barely make out the blue of a BULLDOG jacket. I wonder if it is just a fight between Northside jocks – until a familiar leather jacket blooms in the crack and fizzle of thunder and lightning, breathing out the green threat of a SERPENT. I stumble off my bicycle, already blocked from the bridge by these cars anyway. I am not even sure what to do, so bewildered that there is a fight until I see a very, _very_ familiar outline that stands too tall, too broad. I do not know another Serpent like him, and it makes me so mad at him that I drop my bike and push forward, skirting around the boys whose faces are lost in the darkness of the night and the pale-yellow smudge of headlights.

“Sweet Pea!” I shout. “ _Sweet Pea_!”

He hears me; some part of me had hoped that I was wrong and that it was not him, that it was another Serpent who had come to the Northside for a fight, but I recognise the sheen in his eyes, the panicked flood when he figures out that I am here, storming toward him. He has tackled a boy who lays limp beneath him, curled inward and dazed. Jughead had looked like that, too. I stand still, thrown by that thought, and look at Sweet Pea with a swell of nausea. He can feel it, I know. He steps forward – _over_ that boy, which makes me recoil all that more from him. He feels that, too, even more than anything else, because he swallows hard and shouts something lost in the scream of the rain.

Then it comes; a sharp, hard pain against the back of my skull and I tumble forward against the concrete, smacking my chin against its hard surface and feeling my jaw _bounce._ I feel my mouth fill with blood. I am almost crushed by a Bulldog, whose bulky frame lands on top of me – there is a fumbled moment of confusion, because he had not been aiming for me, but rather lifting his arm to punch another kid who falls with us. I grunt against the pain of this kid whose body sits on mine, and it makes it hard to breathe. Even beneath him, I hear the crack of a gunshot and hold deathly still, terrified.

It feels as if we are there for hours, stuck dumb by that sound, as if the rain has been suspended in the midst of falling, posed in frozen droplets. Suddenly, the boy is torn from me, cast aside and thrown to the ground all over again, and the rain continues to plop against the ground. I feel Sweet Pea there, his arm slithering around my waist to haul me upward. His hand cups the back of my skull and pulls away with blood. I am lifted even though I feel like I am made of rocks which tumble around inside of my body and make me even heavier with each stumble toward a car. In the madness, I hear someone scream that someone has been stabbed.

“No, no, my bicycle, I need my bicycle-…” I call out; my words slur, and that makes me more scared than anything because I can feel the slackness of my mouth and the copper spit which stains each word. I lift a shaky hand to touch my lip and find it has been torn, bitten between my teeth somewhere along the line. Now, it stings, and I feel my eyes sting with tears, too. I am pushed toward a car, pushed into it faster than I can really understand, because I am engulfed by Sweet Pea. Dimly, I realise that it is Birdie and Max in the front.

I want to push him away from me, like he pushed me. I do it. I push at his chest and push myself toward the other end of the seats, but there is not much space in this car and we crash together with each sharp turn. He has a cut lip too, his eyebrow is shredded and his jaw swells in a yellowish bruise.

“Why did you do that?” I ask.

He looks distraught. He reaches to brush blood from my lip and flinches when I slap his hand away. “Archie Andrews.”

“What?”

“Archie Andrews pulled that gun on us in the Southside.”

I stare at him incredulously. He shrinks from my gaze, glares ahead of us instead. The road floats in hazy blue ahead of us, like an apparition. “You went after the guy who showed us that he has a _weapon_ that he can use to defend himself?”

 “I made it a fair fight,” he replies hastily. “No weapons-…”

“Right, so that gunshot was just in my imagination?”

“No, I-...Why were you even _there_?”

I almost laugh, but I am so annoyed with him that the sound is lost somewhere inside of me. “Are you really asking me that? So, when Monday came around, you just weren’t going to tell me that you spent your weekend fighting with Northsiders?”

“It’s Serpent business.” He looks away with his words, chews at his lips and holds himself tight.

“Birdie,” I call out faintly. The boy looks at me through the rear-view mirror. “Stop the car.”

“What?” Sweet Pea balks.

“We’re on the Southside. My house is two blocks from here. I want you to stop the car.”

Birdie looks between myself and Sweet Pea, conflicted, but I lift myself from my seat and lean toward him. “Please, Birdie. I want to get out now.”

Slowly, he pulls the car toward the curb and lets me hop out. I snatch my backpack and fling it onto my back. I hear Sweet Pea scramble to follow, evidently a little slow because of a limp in his left leg – maybe a Bulldog kicked him there. I can’t really say I was too sympathetic. I shout a quick _‘thank you’_ to Birdie and storm ahead.

Sweet Pea shouts, “I thought you understood what this all meant, Mila! What being a Serpent meant!”

I whirl around and retrace my steps until I reach him, glaring upward at him. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. And I think you like it.”

“Like it?” he repeats, his fists clenching. “Fighting Northsiders, just to defend ourselves-…”

“Were you defending yourself that night you met this _Archie Andrews_? No, because you were going to rough him up anyway, right? You remember when you told me that before you punch something, you don’t do a lot of thinking, you just _do_ it – but you had a _lot_ of days to think about this fight, Sweet Pea. You wanted to teach the Northsiders a lesson-…”

“Yeah!” he yells. “Yeah, I did, because they keep walking all over us-…”

“Someone was stabbed back there, Sweet Pea,” I state flatly; the fight has been drained out of me. “Did you pull your knife again?”

He looks affronted, stepping away from me. He seems deflated, too. “No. No, I didn’t. How could you think-…”

“But you would have done it if you had to do it.”

He opens his mouth but closes it soon enough. Again, he repeats his earlier question, but it is coated in newfound remorse and sadness. “What were you doing over there, Mila?”

“I made a new friend and we went bowling – you know, regular teenager stuff. We had _fun_ , Sweet Pea. And I don’t care that he’s a Northsider-…”

“A _Northsider_?” he interrupts furiously. His anger has blossomed again, it burns so bright in all of its fury.

“Yeah, a Northsider. A kid on the other side of the bridge.” I pull my backpack off and tug at its zipper. He watches me, confused when I rip out the white teddy-bear and stuff it into his hands. He grabs it and looks between myself and the bear with furrowed eyebrows. “I won some tickets from our game of air-hockey and got that for you. Thought you could put it beside the other bear in your trailer. Now, you can look at it and remember me, because once my social-worker visits and sees I’m all cut up, she might start asking questions. And it never works out for me when they do that, no matter what the reason is. So, thanks, Sweet Pea. I hope you really taught those Northsiders that lesson tonight, whatever it was meant to be. I really hope it was all worth it.”

He swallows and winces at the sting which comes from his lip, still bleeding. “Mila, can’t we just-…”

 I leave him there, his silhouette outlined in the cool, starched white of Birdie’s headlights.

vi

Ruth presses a damp cotton-ball against my mouth and whispers soothing words each time I flinch at the sting. Rosie hovers anxiously in the doorway of the bathroom but Ruth soon shoos her into bed. I promise her a bedtime story, but I hope that she will be asleep before I can tell it, because I am so shattered that I sit on the edge of the bathtub and feel as if I might fall into it and sleep for the night there, curled against the porcelain. I told Ruth that I had skidded into a ditch in the rain and that my bicycle got stuck in the mud. I tell that I can get it tomorrow, in the fresh light of morning, when the storm has finally settled. Ruth hums and nods, but there is a faint sheen in her eyes, a film of uncertainty. She presses plasters dotted in _Hello, Kitty_ against my cuts and quickly pops downstairs, only to return with a small bar of chocolate to cheer me up. I smile at her attempt and take the bar anyway, tearing it open and sharing out the pieces between us.

Ruth sits on the closed toilet-seat and watches me with that familiar knowingness. It is the same knowingness that Toni often shows. “Wanna talk about it, Mila?” she asks softly.

“Not tonight,” I tell her. “Please, Ruth. Not tonight.”

She nods and stands, shutting the door behind me. I sit there for a long while and think of the night when Sweet Pea had sat alongside me. I look at that spot where he had been and feel the prickle of tears return; the salty droplets trail along my cheek and sting the cut on my lip.

 

 


	10. chapter ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't updated in a while, much longer than I would have liked anyway. So, I have made this chapter longer and full of the usual Riverdale-esque drama that we have come to love and then later detest in Season 3 if anyone has the same feelings that I do about it. Anyway, here's the new chapter. Please, please leave some feedback if you can, it would greatly encourage me!

**chapter ten: black beauty**

* * *

 

Somewhere around midnight, Sweet Pea sends his last text, its blackened letters etched into the bleached whiteness of the screen, pure in its simplicity: _I never meant for tonight to happen like it did. I made a mistake. I’m sorry, Mila._ He is much more succinct in his texts, he has more time to think about his words than he had had tonight, his brain so fraught in the aftermath of the fight that he had been clumsy and mean. I stuff the phone beneath my pillow in an attempt to smother his words, smother all of those doubts which swirl around my mind and force me to doubt myself.  I wonder if it was really me at fault for not fully realising just what Serpent meant for him. I had thought that I understood the meaning well, but I never expected it to tread into pocket-knife territory. I stare at the colourful drawings tacked against my wall and feel the prickle of tears flood me in a sudden rush of-…well, I am not sure what it is, really; anxiety, sadness, anger?

In a sudden rush of frustration, I type out my own message: _I think I made a mistake_. I send it, then flop against my pillow with a frustrated sigh.

I startle at the sudden creak in my floorboards and lift myself to find a small, blurry outline in the darkness, small hands latched around a limp unicorn – the unicorn that I had won for her in the arcade, its horn frayed because she had chewed on it, perhaps out of her own anxiety, her own sadness, her own anger. I hold my arms out for her. Rosie clambers onto the bed and settles against me, her head nestled into the crook of my neck. She curls against me like all of those monkeys she imitates in shrieks and yelps. She is quiet, now. She breathes slowly. I hear the odd hoarseness behind it and realise that she must have been crying earlier.

She croaks, “Will Helena take you away because you hurt your face?”

I want to tell her that Helena will never do that, but the words are stuck somewhere in my throat, lodged there, so that all other sounds come out slow and coated in a cracked rasp. “I can explain that I fell off of my bicycle.”

Rosie is quiet once more. Then, she mumbles, “But then you wouldn’t be telling her the truth.”

Blankly, I stare at the ceiling. I had told her that Ruth wants us to tell the truth. I drop my stare from the ceiling and drink in those colourful drawings again. I know what it will happen to me, soon enough. So, I say, “You should draw me a picture sometime, Rosie.”

“I don’t want them to take you away, Mila. I want you to stay here with me and Ruth.”

The scratchy, wobbly lines which compose stick-figure children from stick-figure homes in other stick-figure towns out there seem to blur into smudges of blended colour; the tears which dampen my cheeks trickle downward and soak into her curly hair, but Rosie has long since fallen asleep.

** ii **

Dawn spills into the house in filtered, washed-out yellow. The sunlight is milky and light, it pours into the kitchen while we eat our breakfast, struck mute from the night before. Even Rosie eats her toast in small, quiet bites, her lips sticky with strawberry-jam and her small hands coated in lumpy crumbs. I tell Ruth that I will walk to school today. She holds her tongue and nods. I pass her, only to pause once she catches my arm and pulls me toward her for a hug. I feel her press a kiss against my hair and then she hurries to collect the dishes, as if it never happened. She fiddles with her hands once she has dropped the dishes in the basin, smooths them against her apron and then pulls at the loose string around her waist, worrying her lip.

“It’ll be fine,” I tell them both. “All right?”

I skirt out of the kitchen before either of them can really answer me.

** iii **

Sat against the curb, her black jacket pulled tight around her slim frame, Toni only stands once the door clatters shut behind me. She grips the cuffs of her sleeves, her lips locked in an awkward, uncertain smile. I stand on the concrete stairs which lead from our house into the garden, warily glancing sideways for the slightest hint of Sweet Pea. Toni shakes her head, as if she knows – but Toni always _knows_. I trust her enough to clatter down those concrete stairs. I glance down at her boots and realise that there is a duffel-bag.

Confused, I ask, “Toni, do you need to stay here tonight? Did your Uncle-…”

“Yeah,” she cuts me off abruptly. “Well, no-…I mean, he did kick me out, but that was last night.”

“Last night?” I repeat. “But where did you stay? Why didn’t you text me or Ruth?”

“Seems like you were already having a rough night yourself, Mila. I didn’t want to add to it with my own lousy problems. Besides, I stayed with Jughead.”

“Did Betty-… mind that?” I ask uncertainly.

“So, this is where things get kind of complicated. They broke up. And we-…we sort of… _kissed_.”

“You and Betty? Or you and Jughead?”

She laughs at me and bumps my shoulder with her fist. “Me and _Jughead_ , moron. I might like girls, but discount-Nancy-Drew has never really been my type.” She watches me for a moment and adds, “Sweet Pea called me last night, you know. After Jughead officially joined the Serpents.”

I had not known about Jughead and his official membership, but I had seen it coming for a while. I brush it off at the thought of Sweet Pea. “I really don’t want to talk about Sweet Pea right now, Toni.”

“I know,” she smiles softly. “That’s why I told him not to bother you today – give you some space. Then I thought it would be hard for you to walk into school and see him anyway, so I thought I’d walk right in there with you.”

I am struck by that warmth that I had felt the first night that I had met Toni and felt a similar connection with her, as if we had been destined to meet one another and become friends. She holds her arm out and lets me loop mine around it before she snatches her bags and we stroll toward the school.

** iv **

Sidling into my seat for English, I really try to listen to Mags and Toni sat behind me. In a heated discussion, they ramble about a new brand of make-up sold only in the bigger shops on the Northside, but my eyes are continually drawn toward the door and the sea of students, which flood through it in small groups. I wait for a tall, broad silhouette to burst through, strong arms latched around Fangs and Birdie, playfully pushing them into their seats and then throwing me a gentle smile meant just for me – he is always gentler with me. I know it will not happen today, though. He might avoid me, or he might be annoyed that I had never replied to his texts. I am so lost in my thoughts that I hardly notice another tall silhouette until it blocks my view of the door and I look upward at War-Boy – or Warren Boyce, the Ghoulie who had turned my pencil case over and bothered me the very first day that I had joined the student body of Southside High.

“Heard you had a little falling out with some friends, Mila. Particularly a _boy_ friend.” he drawls. His skin is lined in raised, thin white lines that he supposedly made himself with a pocket-knife a couple of months beforehand. I heard that he had been held in an institution afterward, but there are a lot of rumours in Southside and most are whispered in the halls without much proof behind them. Still, Warren has a certain aura around him, an unstable blend of violence and perversion. He muses onward, “I thought to myself, if the _Serpents_ don’t want this pretty girl, why don’t _I_ offer a bit of _Ghoulie_ protection to her instead?”

I bite my tongue hard and glare at him, aware that the Serpents are just behind me. I never really thought about whether the Serpents would revoke their friendship and protection if I was not with Sweet Pea. I swallow at the thought, because I had become friends with a lot of them and hope that it would never be an issue. War-Boy leans low, crouches like an animal and licks at his rotted teeth, then smacks his lips together. He lifts a hand, his fingernails crusted in blackened dirt, and reaches out as if he wants to cup my chin or brush the bluish stain of a bruise on my cheek.

Instead, his wrist is gripped by another hand and he lets out a howl of pain; he contorts himself, his shoulders hunched and his body hobbled, bent against the desk to hold himself upward and the grip on his wrist only tightens. I follow the hand which holds him and find Sweet Pea, his face oddly blank of expression, but his eyes are coal and swollen in violence, his left eye bruised in a red stain.

Behind me, I hear the scrape of a chair and I know that Toni has stood because she calls out, “ _Sweet Pea_!”

She warns him, because the Ghoulies slink from their chairs behind him and surround the Serpents stood alongside us, and there is sudden chorus of pocket-knives pulled from pockets and cracked open. Sweet Pea seems not to hear much apart from the thunderous gush of anger in his eardrums, because I recognise that fury held in him, I had felt it too, so I bolt upward from my seat and latch my own hand around his arm to make him focus on me rather than War-Boy, whose skin has flushed in a splotchy red, his lips flapping like that of a horse as he breathes through the pain of his wrist, still crushed.

“Sweet Pea,” I whisper urgently, “please!”

Robotically, he releases his hand. There is a familiar tenderness in him once he meets my eyes. Hesitantly, he places a hand on my arm, so light that it is barely a touch at all. He shuffles me toward the next row just beside me. He pulls out a chair that he motions for me to sit in. I do so, my hands a little shaky, and he grabs my backpack and coat from my previous place, only to drape the coat on the back of my chair and my backpack alongside me, all without a word. He takes my old seat so that he sits between me and the Ghoulies, like a barrier. My heart swells in warmth and floods with guilt, all at once. War-Boy is hauled off with the other Ghoulies, whose beady eyes narrow at Sweet Pea, numerous threats hissed out while they shuffle toward their side of the classroom.

Sweet Pea does not react. He sits rigidly, his arms stretched out in front of him and his legs tucked close against his chair. I am a little dumbstruck that he had still tried to protect me and still does it now by sitting in my old chair, pushing me into the circle of Serpents who watch us carefully but then return to their own conversations as if the Ghoulie-Serpent stand-off had been nothing more than a minor inconvenience. I had thought that Sweet Pea might not want to be near me at all, after all that I had said. I sink low into my seat, conflicted by my emotions. I want to be angry with him because he had picked fights and put himself in danger so many times – put _me_ in danger too, albeit indirectly and without any desire to do so.

But I also know that he beats himself up more than anybody ever could, too.

Quietly, I mumble, “Thank you, Sweet Pea.”

I almost think he has not heard me, because he stares straight ahead at the chalkboard, unblinking. I am about to look away from him – and then it comes, a quick nod and his posture soon loosens, his shoulders dipping and his jaw loosening from its tight clench.  

** v **

The bell just barely cracks out a ring once English finishes in the crescendo of chairs and bags collected before the class swarms toward the hall. I hold still, my eyes latched onto Sweet Pea who has still not stood from his seat. Toni raises her eyebrows at me, but I nod reassuringly. She shrugs, trailing behind Mags and Max into the hall. I wait for him, but he remains seated. Finally, I plop into the seat in front of him and turn toward him to lean my arms on his desk and look at him. He swallows, then lifts his eyes. I find them rimmed in a reddish line, bloodshot from lack of sleep.

“Which smiley-face do you feel like today?” he asks lowly.

I blink at him in surprise and then let out a loud laugh, smiling fondly at him. I remember that stuff I had told him in his trailer-park about my old anger-management sheets from my darker days. “Sad. Confused, I guess.”

“Toni told me that you wanted space,” he states, nodding his chin toward my arms on his desk. “Did I misunderstand what space meant?”

I snort. “I found it a lot harder to stay away from you once I was near you again – if that makes _any sense_ , because I realise how it sounds. And I’m not trying to mess around with your feelings or give you mixed messages, Sweet Pea, but I’m really-…”

“Sad. And confused, you guess?”

“Yeah,” I agree, still smiling at him despite myself. I let out a deep sigh. “And scared.”

He straightens, his expression flushed in anger. “ _Scared_? Mila, you know that I would do _anything_ to protect you, and that night on the Northside, I-…. I didn’t expect you there, and if I had known, I never would have started that fight, all right? So, I’m sorry you-…”

I grasp his hand in mine, which slows his words into complete silence, his eyes darting downward to glare at the ground as he inhales deeply to calm himself. I murmur, “How many times do I need to tell you, Sweet Pea? I’m as scared for you as much as I am myself. A boy was _stabbed_. And-…”

“And _what_?”

“And what if it had been you?” I ask. He pauses, his words stolen from him in a single breath. He straightens his jaw and flops backward against his chair, but I continue, “What if it had been you, and I had to watch you bleed out over there? Like you said, Sweet Pea – even if I had gotten you to the hospital, those nurses would treat any Northsider with a paper-cut before they would touch you. I know that now and _that_ is what scares me. I’m scared for tonight, too.”

“Why tonight?”

“Helena,” I mumble. “… the new social-worker. She wants to come around again tonight. Our second meeting.”

He closes his eyes and curses under his breath. “Can’t you call her and rearrange?”

“For when? The end of the week, when I’ll still have a bruise or cut? I’m not make-up would do much good against the cuts.”

“You really think she’d take you away just for that, Mila?”

“Maybe not. But she would ask questions and if she doubted us, she might start an investigation. How long do you think it would take for her to find out about Jughead and the forged documents that let him stay alone in his Dad’s trailer? Documents forged by _Ruth_.”

“We can figure it out. It’ll be fine,” he promises. “All right?”

“All right,” I echo quietly.

“Mila,” he starts awkwardly. “I wanted to tell you-… that I’d really like to leave the pocket-knife at home from now on but I’m-…. I’m _scared_ too – to be without it.”

I soften, aware of how difficult it is for him to admit that. “Sweet Pea…”

“Hear me out. I started carrying that knife when I was _thirteen_. Had a run-in with some Ghoulies long before I was even a Serpent.” He lifts his shirt and shows a thin, raised line in his abdomen, a line like those which litter War-Boy’s body, but I can tell that this cut on Sweet Pea was not intentional. “That thing that I said about the gurney in the Northside hospital-… I said it because I experienced it. I was left there for four hours in a hall before a nurse even took my details and they only got the doctor to see me because I collapsed in their hall and I was blocking the janitors who wanted to clean the floors. They looked at me like _I_ was the dirt.”

He takes a deep, shaky breath again. “So, I carry that pocket-knife because I know the other guy will be carrying one, too. I’m not that old, but any time I see a new Serpent, I tell them to carry one. I know I shouldn’t, but I do – because I don’t want that kid to be like me, caught in an alleyway and surrounded by guys stronger and bigger than him who are willing to do the things with a pocket-knife that I keep hoping I’ll never have to do.”

I stand from my chair and move around it to hold him, hug him against me. I kneel against the ground and hold his head against the crook of my neck like I had done with Rosie, rub his back and feel him hold me tight, lifting me upward to sit on his lap. Normally, I would blush, but there is nothing more than desperation and anger in him, mixed with sadness and frustration in me that it has to be like this for us.

“Please don’t think of me as a mistake,” he whispers, his words breathed against the flesh of my throat, soaked into my skin. I realise that he thinks my text last night had implied that _he_ was the mistake, and I hold him even closer.

“I could never think that, Sweet Pea,” I tell him softly. “I sent that because I think I tried to pretend that I could handle the Serpent stuff better than I really can.”

He leans away from me to look into my eyes. “If you want us to leave you be, I promise we will – all the Serpents, I’ll make sure of it. I’ll still keep the Ghoulies away, but other than that, we’ll stay away.”

I stare into the serious, honest expression in his face and lean forward to kiss him. I take him by surprise, which is still there even when I pull away from him. “Sweet Pea, I don’t want you to stay away. Not you, not the Serpents. But the _Ghoulies_? Yeah, they can stay away. Especially War-Boy.”

He snorts. “For his sake, he should.”

I roll my eyes. “Sweet Pea, I can handle myself just fine. But I have been trying to avoid fights and violence for a long time. A year might not seem like a long time for you, but it is for me. I worked so hard _every day_ to make sure I could clean my record up and find a better place – a _permanent place_. Now, I’ve found it, and I’m trying just as hard not to lose it. I freaked out last night because-…”

“Helena,” he finishes for me.

“Helena,” I repeat.

“I promise that it will never happen,” he tells me, his hands tight around my waist. “No matter what happens – Serpent, Ghoulie, _social-worker_ …You’re a Southsider now, Mila. Nobody changes that, and nobody can take you away from the Southside. They’d have to get past me first. And Ruth.”

I laugh at him, warmed by his promise but unsure if he could really keep it with how much the tide seems to turn against us in this town. Still, I feel his sincerity. “I think they’d be more afraid of Ruth.”

“Well, I sure am,” he mutters under his breath. I feel his smile against the skin of my throat when I laugh. He presses a kiss there.

I feel my phone vibrate and take it out to find JUGHEAD flashing against the screen. I stand, and Sweet Pea follows suit, grabbing my backpack for me as we walk toward the hall. I answer Jughead just as we turn into the main hall and I glimpse him at the other end, his phone held against his ear. I almost call out for him but spot a now familiar redhead behind him, gripping his arm and pulling him away so that his phone drops from his ear – Archie Andrews grabs him and takes him away.

“Jughead?” I call aloud, although I am sure that he would never hear me from that far away.

Yet his eyes flash to meet mine and I spot an odd emotion in them: _regret_.

** vi **

Then I hear the loud crash of the doors behind us, thrown open by the boots of policemen, the hall filled with the cries of officers who order us to remain still, their hands latched around the leashes of dogs whose muzzles froth in whitish foam; their lips lift to reveal sharp canines, dripping in a froth that is spat outward with each harsh bark.

Sweet Pea has a quicker reaction, perhaps from all the other times in which he has fled from the police. He pushes me forward to run, although my limbs are filled with that familiar lead that makes them heavy to lift. I rush from outstretched hands and feel Sweet Pea right behind me, once again putting himself between me and another threat.

I dart under the arm of an officer, my hand still clasped tight around Sweet Pea. I skid toward the next hall and find Toni ahead of us. I yell for her to run, but an officer catches me around my waist and spins me away from her. I feel Sweet Pea’s hand slip from mine and frantically look for him in the blurred rush of police around us. I am thrown against a locker and it hurts the bruises on my arms, quickly gripped at the wrist by an officer who harshly yanks them behind my back.

I look to my left and find Sweet Pea there, grabbed by two policemen to struggle to hold him. A third joins and kicks at his legs, making my eyes widen. He had told me enough times that the policemen in Riverdale did not care much for the safety and wellbeing of Serpent kids, but I watch him being roughed up and feel my chest tighten with each shove and push.

I scream his name in the crowd and his head snaps toward me, right when an officer grabs a fistful of his hair and then thumps him against the locker. Sweet Pea raises his fist as if he might retaliate, but the officer grips it tightly, as tightly as Sweet Pea had gripped War-Boy. Sweet Pea bucks like a wild animal against their hold. I realise that somewhere in all of this confusion, I had started to cry from the sight of him being thrown around like that.

I feel them pat my legs, my arms, all parts of me until there is nothing left, and I am spun around. I feel them release me and think that maybe they know now that I am not a Serpent. Sweet Pea had told me that night in the laundromat that they only want Serpent blood, but I look into the cold stare of the officer in front of me and wonder if their bloodlust has grown into something even more sinister.

The metal of the handcuffs is cold and startles me from my thoughts, makes me drop my eyes toward my wrists as if they are not mine – and Sweet Pea holds still now, he does not fight against him. He breathes heavily, his chest heaves from the effort. He looks between me and the officer with wide eyes before his face fills with rage and he roars, “What are you arresting her for? She hasn’t done anything! Get off of me, get off-…Get off of _her_ – hey, _she hasn’t done anything wrong_!”

Dimly, I realise that Jughead had been calling to warn me, because he knows that if the cuts from that fight last night did not convince Helena to take me from Riverdale, then an arrest would definitely seal my fate.

I am not sure if it is that thought which sparks it or the noise that Toni lets out when an officer pushes her against the lockers like us, but I push at the policeman in front of me and feel the familiar rush of hands around me when I start to fight like Sweet Pea had. I also remember how much the social-workers used to try and lift me at the waist to pull me off other people because I am not that tall and not that big, so when an arm snakes around my waist and hauls me up, I use the momentum to kick at the officer in front of me.

I can hear that loud, white-noise static which screams in my eardrums and drowns out all other noise – it used to happen whenever I fought, but the unfairness of it all drives me to struggle and struggle until I am suddenly pushed down onto the floor. I feel a knee pressed into my back to hold me there, but it hardly matters because I can see the numerous leather shoes in front of me, the beige pants of deputies and officers, and I know that there is no point, anymore.

Sweet Pea is pressed down against the floor alongside me, on my right, and Toni is pushed to my left. I look at them through misty eyes and find them equally distraught. He opens his mouth to yell something to me, but hands grip his arms and pull him up, pull him away from me and toward blocky police-trucks outside the school.

** vii **

The cell is clammy and dark, lit by a bulb which sputters out a weak hum of lime-green light into the cramped space. I pace around while Toni stretches out on the bench and Sweet Pea leans against the bars, hands draped outside of them, his fingers tapping a frantic rhythm against the metal. Birdie had been caught in the bathrooms and we could only barely muster a laugh at the fact that his pants had still been around his ankles when the policemen broke the door of his stall. He had been searched for this _jingle-jangle_ stuff. The door in the hall creaks open and another student of Southside High is dragged into this tight, confined cell – and of all the students in the school, it had to be War-Boy who slinks toward us with a slick grin. Sweet Pea straightens up and narrows his eyes at him. The Sheriff must notice, because he warns, “No more rough business, boys. Not in my cells. We barely have enough to space for all you Southsiders.”

“Probably should have only arrested _just_ the dealers and not the whole school then to spare you the useless paperwork,” Toni states lightly. She looks at him lazily and tacks on a sickly-sweet, “ _Sir_.”

He glances behind Sweet Pea and hums. “Ah, Ms. Topaz – can’t say I’m too surprised to see that you’re back in here. You really gotta start paying rent for the amount of times we’ve put you up in this place, you know.”

“Fix the leaky pipes and you got a deal,” she replies bitterly.

The Sheriff nods, seeming unaffected, and then looks over the cell toward me, an eyebrow raised. “You Serpents caught the new girl pretty quick, huh? Mason, wasn’t it? We contacted your guardian, she just arrived.”

I push around War-Boy and his smarmy grin to reach the bars, standing beside Sweet Pea. I feel a rush of hope, although I know she might be angry with me anyway, but I can explain it all. “Ruth is here?”

The Sheriff smiles. “No. But a _Ms. Helena Blackwood_ is here. Your social-worker, if I’m not mistaken. Due to this recent development, Helena will be taking over from here on out. She’ll discuss it all with you, but I believe they’re figuring out a new placement for you. Seems the Southside just isn’t quite working out like they had hoped. What a shame.”

He throws a pointed glare at Sweet Pea and then turns to walk out, whistling a light, airy tune. I drift from the bars in a daze and bump against the concrete wall of the cell, my skin prickled in a red-hot heat and my heart thumping much too quickly, so quickly that I feel dizzy and think I might really faint. Toni leaps from the bench and reaches out to gently hold me in her arms, murmuring soft words into my ear that I can barely hear because my brain feels as if it has been stuffed with cotton. My eyes swell with tears and I blink through them to find Sweet Pea looking at me, his arms useless at his side and his fists squeezing as if he wants to punch something but cannot summon the strength. _You’re a Southsider now, Mila_ , he told me. _Nobody changes that, and nobody can take you away from the Southside_.

** viii **

Another two hours trail from us in a slow crawl of ticks and thumps from the old clock stabled by the door; an officer enters and orders me to hold my wrists through the grate in the bars and then he latches handcuffs around me, warns the others to line against the wall and pulls me out into the hall before the gate swings shut behind me. He puts his hand around my arm and tugs me toward the main door. I attempt to root myself and say, “Wait, I want to tell my friends-…”

“I could not care less what you want to tell your friends, kid,” the officer mutters lowly. “I got twenty minutes left on this shift, all right?”

“Sweet Pea!” I shout, twisting awkwardly in the chains to turn toward him. I glimpse him, just barely, pressed against the bars with his arms stuck through them to try and reach for me, as if he might pull me from the officer and out of this place. Toni calls for me, too, in between his roars, in between his yells that he will get me out of this, he promises it, he swears it with all that he has in him, and I feel it like I had felt his words spoken against my skin earlier, soaked into me.

** ix **

I sit behind a panel in which I can watch the reflection of myself; curtain of black hair, skin flushed in a colourless pallor and my cuts even more prominent in the cold, blue light which hangs over me. I really wish Ruth was here. I really wish I could hold Rosie once more and apologise for all of this mess that I never meant to happen. _I never meant for tonight to happen like it did. I made a mistake. I’m sorry._ I think of Sweet Pea’s text this morning and how much it means to me now. The door opens, there is the shuffle of documents, the scratch of the chair against the tiles and then Helena is sat in front of me with a weak smile.

“Hello, Mila.”

I nod, my throat too tight and dry for a proper response.

Helena seems to understand that. “Oh, Mila, I’m sure we both knew that the Southside was a bit of risk, anyway. I’m sure we can find you a much better placement. I’m sure-…”

“With all due respect, Helena,” I spit through gritted teeth, “… I’m _sure_ that the Southside is the _only_ placement for me. I have never stayed anywhere this long, and Ruth is easily the best guardian I have ever had. I want to stay with her and Rosie. Please, you have to understand, I wasn’t even _arrested_ for anything, I-…”

“You resisted arrest,” she corrects. “And it seems you have quite a few bruises, Mila. Would you like to explain those for me?”

“I fell off my bicycle.” I stare at her and she lets out a patronising hum, tilting her head in sympathy as if she really feels bad about it all. I draw in a breath to steady myself, because I can feel my temper flaring more than it ever has in my life, and I know that I would much rather kick and scream to express myself than sit here. “What, a kid can’t fall off her _bicycle_?”

“Oh, of course,” she clucks, “…. of course, a kid can fall from their bicycle, Mila. But you have to see this from _my_ point of view, as well.”

“You’re not listening to me,” I mumble angrily. “You and all the other social-workers never listen to me.”

“Perhaps we should start by considering the placements left. I looked at your list of places you have already stayed at, we might be quite limited in what we can do-…”

“You never _listen_.”

“That means we might need to consider the State Home, but that really should be our last option, and I’m sure-…”

The door bangs open in this small room, startling us both. I look up and find Ruth, dressed in wrinkled clothes, her eyes swollen and red. She throws her handbag onto the floor once she reaches me, rushing around the desk, all the folders and papers tossed aside too, then latches onto me and pulls me tight against her. I sob into her neck, feeling her orange warmth and soft whispers, her hand smoothing my hair like she had last night when she put a plaster over each wound, and this morning when she had held me in the kitchen.

Between shaky breaths, I say, “I want to stay here, Ruth, please don’t let them do this-…”

She pulls me against her even more and I feel a wetness on my t-shirt from her own tears. I remember that Rosie had asked if we could watch _The Princess and the Frog_ next Sunday. She had found a frog in the Northside park once and held it in her palm and lightly stroked its speckled, slimy skin. She could not understand why Ruth had been so grossed out by this little creature. Rosie never has much fear in her. I hope it stays like that. I hope she takes on the whole world with that attitude. I know she will need it in a place like Riverdale.

I wish I could say that I was without fear, but it never quite worked out like that for me.

“Mila, honey, even if they take you tonight, I am going to fight this like you cannot believe – they have no right to do this. Sweetie, did you resist arrest like they’re saying?”

“No, I just-…I got scared, I tried to just get them off me, I swear I never meant it to be like this-… I made a mistake, Ruth-…”

“Okay, honey, okay,” she nods, brushing away every tear which trickles down my cheeks. Helena watches us but does not seem very affected. She shuffles papers and clicks her pen with little patience.

“Ruth,” I croak, “…. they want to take me to the State Home.”

I had heard whispers of the State Home before; it is said to be a slab of concrete and glass, surrounded in mesh fences and steel bars, with rows upon rows of bunk-beds for each kid, strictly separated by their age and gender, surrounded by wardens whose reputation is that of burly tyrants. I heard that most kids in the State Home only left it once they had reached eighteen. I heard that all they got on that day was a bus-ticket for the nearest town.

Ruth seems to know about it too, because her skin pales and she sucks in her lips as if she struggles for breath, but she smiles through it for me and says, “Not on my watch, kiddo. I told you, I will fight this with all I got in me. We can do this together, right?”

“Right,” I nod. “Right.”

“So, Helena,” Ruth starts, standing from her spot and looking very much like a warrior prepared for battle. “… I would like to speak to you privately. Mila, could you wait in the hall for me, please?”

  **x**

I am left to sit in the hall of the police-station long after all of the other Southside students have either been released or charged. Helena and Ruth have been in that room for a while, too. I can only hear muffled voices, occasionally raised. I sit on a wooden bench, sniffling every once in a while. I hear the sound of scuffed shoes against the linoleum and glance up to watch a blonde woman approach, her eyes rimmed in dark, kohl eyeliner that has been smudged outward to surround her icy blue stare. She has a briefcase in her hand, but it seems odd for someone like her, whose sneakers are tattered, whose leather jacket matches that of a Serpent and not really a businesswoman or lawyer. She slinks with great confidence and ease, then pauses in front of me, glancing down.

“Mila Mason?” she asks.

“Um, yeah,” I respond. “Who are you?”

She cocks her head and considers me, an eyebrow raised. “Yeah. I thought you would be pretty for all the trouble he went through for this.”

“What?”

She turns on her heels and marches right into the room where Helena and Ruth still argue, but the door swings shut and there comes no more shouts or yells. Instead, there is the click of a briefcase and muffled words, back and forth, but it seems as if it is the blonde who speaks the most. Confused, I stand from the bench and think about stepping into the room until I hear the door of the station close in a soft swoosh and spin around to find Sweet Pea there, his body soaked in rain and his shoulders slumped. I stare at him and wonder if he has come to say his final word, but he starts to walk toward me, reaching me in just a couple of seconds from his long strides. He holds me against him, even if he is drenched from the rain. I feel his body tremble, but I am not sure that it is just from the cold.

“Sweet Pea? Sweet Pea, who is that?”

He pulls away from me and looks into my eyes. The door opens behind us, but I cannot seem to find it in me to look away from him, because there is something in his stare that makes me think there is something wrong here. Helena storms past us, toward the exit. I finally look away from him and watch her, my mouth falling open in surprise. I turn toward Ruth. Sweet Pea stands right behind me, practically pasted against my back, a looming shadow whose form seems to swell at the sight of the blonde who leans against the door and taps her long fingernails against the wooden frame.

Ruth looks pale, her arms latched around herself as if she wants to hug herself just as tightly as she had hugged me. Her lips wobble. She looks at the blonde with spite in her eyes, but the blonde only peels herself from the doorframe and approaches me. I am not sure what Sweet Pea does behind me, but she glances up at him and purrs, “Easy, tiger. I would simply like to congratulate you, Mila – you get to stay here on the Southside, honey. Isn’t that some _awesome news_?”

I am shocked and relieved, but I can tell that the continuation of my placement has not been arranged in a way that seems to settle well with Ruth, because she shifts at those words.

Unbothered, the blonde lifts her eyes once more to look at Sweet Pea and smiles at him. “So, I held my end of the deal, Sweet Pea. Now, you hold yours.”

She slinks around us, like a panther. She disappears into the dense downpour of rain outside, lost in its thunderous roar, and I turn to face Sweet Pea, worried. “Sweet Pea?” I twist to look at Ruth instead, but her eyes are on the ground. “ _Ruth_? Ruth, who was that woman? Sweet Pea, please just answer me!”

Droplets plop from his long eyelashes, falling onto his cheeks like tears, but he lifts his eyes and I see how determined he is to pretend that this is all fine. He reaches out to hug me again, all questions smothered by the feeling of his leather jacket against my skin, but I still hear Ruth behind me. I hear the frantic worry in her voice. I hear her fall apart beneath the strain of it all.

“What did you promise her?” Ruth asks, her voice cracking. “Sweet Pea, _what did you promise her_!”

“I promised _Mila_ that I would never let them take her from the Southside,” he yells. I flinch from him, surprised that he dared shout at Ruth. “I kept that promise tonight, all right? So, what does it matter what else I promised Penny!”

Ruth falls against the bench and holds her head in her hands. She looks up at him, her eyes once again filled with tears. “Oh, Sweet Pea…”

He turns away from her. He looks down at me and repeats, “I kept my promise, Mila.”

_But what did he promise Penny?_

 


	11. chapter eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are back for our usual spell of general drama and angst before the happier times - I find it easier to write the dramatic stuff anyway. I have added a new character (usually anybody you don't recognise from the show) and I also combine some episodes or speed them up a little because the Serpents are not in every single one (sadly).   
> Once again, I debated having Mila or Sweet Pea sleep in the same house/place - but like I previously said, no guardians or parents seem too fussed about that stuff in this show. I'm quite sure in the last three episodes I covered that Jughead/Betty and Archie/Veronica have all been in various states of undress and asleep in each other's houses all the time lol. 
> 
> In the next chapter or so, the Southsiders will be moving to Northside High and I'm excited for that. Also, Mila vs. Penny. 
> 
> I am really grateful for the support shown in the last chapter and I hope this one is well-received too. Please, if you have the time, I'd appreciate a review or any kind of feedback. :)

** chapter eleven: are you okay? **

* * *

 

Moonlight slips between the folds of his curtains and drapes itself around my skin in a bluish smoulder, brightens the bruises which litter my arms and smudges the dark, reddish stains beneath my sockets. He has sealed himself into the hum of the bathroom, its creaky faucets which sputter out cold trickles, its dense clouds of condensation, the rattle of the shower-curtain against a rusted rail. I curl against the blankets, smooth its creases with anxious hands. Sweet Pea has been nothing but distant; the warmth in him had dimmed once we had left the police-station, his touch had been automatic and disconnected, as if he had to fumble with his limbs and force them into movement.

Slowly, the door of the bathroom scuffs open, a brief and pale puff of heat flushed outward into the trailer before his silhouette emerges in a cool, stenciled outline, like the sketch of an unaware muse. Shoulders dipped downward, chin tilted against his chest, he settles upon the mattress with such heaviness that I feel as if I sink alongside him, into some darkened space – scooped into the mouth of Penny Peabody, whose name still induces a flush of nausea within me and makes an odd itch flourish around my throat, like a rash.

Earlier, Sweet Pea had said that he was tired.

I look at him now and wonder if he had really meant that he was tired of _me_.

Penny holds heavy, cold chains around him and I compose each loop which tightens around his limbs, lifts him upward like the strings of a puppet. I feel a lump in my throat blossom, so much so that it becomes a thickened ball that makes it hard to swallow. I am afraid that he has been quiet all this time because he has been planning the rights words to finish with me, finally; and who would ever take a kid like me, anyway?

I squeeze my lips together in a struggle against the sudden prickle of tears, but it stings too much, so the tears bloom in hot trickles and lick at the cuts which scatter my cheeks, trace the bruises, drip onto my chest, soaked into my skin. I lift a hand to brush off each tear but he catches my wrist and tugs me toward him. I clamber from the blankets and settle alongside him, oddly craving his touch, borne from hours of blank detachment from him. He pulls me into the crook of his arm, nestles me there.

“Mila,” he whispers. “I think we need to talk about – about tonight.”

“Okay,” I tell him; it comes out feeble and coated in resignation. I flinch from the sound of it. “Okay, Sweet Pea.”

“I never told you who she was,” he says, “because I never wanted you to be ashamed of me.”

Blinking through the smudge of tears, I pull myself from him and lift his limp arm, drape it between both of mine so that I can hold it tight, like Rosie clutches a teddy. Only his eyes are drawn toward another dent in his wall, and my fingertips ghost the knuckles which had put that dent there. “Sweet Pea, I don’t understand.”

He lets out a slow sigh. He seems to deflate in this exhale. His body leans against mine, now. I hold the heaviness of him, bear the brunt of the sheer fatigue held in the marrow of his bones from this awful night. Hoarseness floods his tired words.

“After we had been separated, the Sheriff told me that Helena wanted to take you from Riverdale within the next few hours. I couldn’t let it happen – not like it happened with my little sister and not like it would happen with you, where I would only ever get handwritten letters from you every couple of months, coated in stamps from some other town in some other state, letters that I would only ever be able to keep in a shoe-box. So, I thought about all the Serpents that I knew and figured out that there was only one who could really help me.”

“Penny.”

He nods, his expression solemn and worn. “Penny. Toni knew what I had planned before I even said the words – she tried so hard outside of that police-station to convince me that we had other options, but she knows how the world treats people like us, Mila. She knew like I did that if I left you in there, that it would be the last night we ever saw you in this town. I called Birdie, had him bring me out to Penny’s place. I made some promises – anything that she wanted, if she could just get you out of there. The things she could make me do – _that_ is why I don’t want you to be ashamed of me, if I have to do them.”

“Sweet Pea…” I whisper.

He stares ahead, blankly, his thoughts elsewhere. “She never said when it would end.”

“What?”

Darkened orbs, his stare glistens in the dim light, like coal. I watch that sheen swell until it seems as if he might cry, too, but he swallows hard and sniffles slightly. He fixes his eyes on the fairy-lights draped around his bedroom, which he had placed there only a little while ago for our film night – it seems so distant, now, that night, like another lifetime. Another existence.

“The whole time that I was sitting there, in her office,” he says, “…She never said when it would end. She never said how many things I had to do for her, how long this little deal would go on for. Then I sat in the car with Birdie and it occurred to me that maybe it won’t ever end. Maybe she’ll hang this over my head for the rest of my life. Or at least until I get caught and thrown in a cell, and who knows how long might that take, you know?”

I watch him, horrified, my hands lost in a tremble. “No, no – she can’t –…”

“She has us in a trap, Mila,” he interrupts, his eyes still focused on something that I cannot quite find, something beyond the fairy-lights and beyond the trailer and beyond this town. “I knew it from the moment I stepped into that office, she had us.”

“And you still agreed,” I mumble.

“Yeah,” he says, “I still agreed.”

“I wish you hadn’t.”

He blinks, torn from his dazed state, his eyes darting toward me in accusation. “If I never made this deal, you would be sitting in a State Home right now, lost in the rows and rows of other kids that are left in that place to rot. I might not be in the system, but I heard enough about it – how could I ever let them put you in a place like that?”

Like pinpricks from a needle, the sting of tears hurts my eyes once more. “How could I ever let Penny do these things to you, Sweet Pea? How could I ever let you be put in this position?”

“I made this choice,” he replies wearily. “Not you. Not Toni, not Birdie. I made this choice, Mila. I will do what she asks of me and she will make sure that you stay here.”

“Do you regret-…” I trail off, ashamed.

“The deal?”

“ _Me_.”

His clenched jaw loosens, his eyes snapped toward me in an instant, clouded in a rich blend of surprise and hurt. He rasps, “How could you even ask me that? I made that deal because I want you here – don't you get that, Mila?”

“I know, I just thought – you were so quiet tonight and I was _so_ sure that you realised that you had made a mistake, that you could just call off this deal with Peabody and be finished with me once and for all. I brought you all of these problems-…”

“Not to diminish your importance, Mila,” he smiles, “…but the Serpents had problems a long time before you ever came around. Hell, if anything, at least you make it _worth_ it. Before, I was just doing things on the off-chance that Tall Boy or F.P might buy us a round of drinks at the Whyte Wyrm. Plus, I kinda like the jacket.”

I blush even more and snort at him, knowing that he just wants to make me smile even in this low, heavy mood which hangs over us. “You still owe me two drinks, if I’m not mistaken.”

He grins; the sight of it makes me flush with affection for him, makes me realise just how much I adore that smile, especially after tonight. “I sell my soul to the devil for a girl and she still wants even more from me, huh? You’re that girl all those guys are singing about in those old blues songs, you know that?”

Slowly, he untangles himself from me and stands, skirting around the bed to fix its blankets and he playfully tugs one out from underneath me. I almost tumble from the bed but quickly catch myself and lightly slap at his arm while he rearranges the pillows, settles them against the headboard and then collapses against it, on the outside so that I can sleep between him and the wall.

I clamber over him, only minutely shy about it because I know that if Ruth had seen it, she would scalp both of us. I like that Ruth had trusted us enough to sleep in his trailer. I think that she is more than aware that I want a slow, _slow_ pace with Sweet Pea – especially after all that Mags had said a couple of days beforehand. I also think she knows that tonight has been too rough for us to spend it apart. 

He pulls his pillows from beneath himself and props them against the headboard so that he can sit straight. I trace the pale outline of his shoulders, the curved bend of his spine once he places his head in his hands and rubs his skin, like he wants to pull it off and start anew. I look away from him again, toward that photograph of Bug.

“Mila, can I ask you something?”

I nod, drinking in her little smile in those old photographs, and wonder if she still smiles like that. I wonder if she is happier in Brooksfield.

“Why don’t you ever talk about your Grandmother?”

I turn toward him, eyebrows drawn together. “I do talk about her.”

“You told me that you loved her. You never said much else.”

“Do I need to talk about her all the time, Sweet Pea?” I mutter bitterly. I catch his eyes flicker downward toward his lap and my chest fills with remorse. “I’m sorry. I just – I like to keep her – in here” – I tap against my temple and shrug “…because it seems better like that.”

“You always doubt yourself, you know,” he says. “Do you ever think that maybe the things your Grandmother told you make you think like that?”

I feel myself fill with anger, all of that anger which has been stuffed somewhere inside of myself for a long time, and it bubbles now, froths and boils and pours into that cool void where I had hidden it, fills it to the brim so it slops over into my tone. “Drop it, Sweet Pea.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it, you never even _knew_ her, and I don’t want to-…”

“Okay, Mila,” he says softly. “Okay.”

Childishly, I turn myself from him, face the wall and curl the blanket around myself so that I can only feel the warmth of his frame behind me, but he has been shrouded in darkness once he flicks off the lamp. I feel hurt and embarrassed that he even asked. I never talk about her, but I never _need_ to talk about her. Beneath all of that anger which swells like a riptide against my ribcage, thunders around my heart and crashes into my throat so hard that it seems to seal it shut, there is another feeling which foams in the aftermath – it feels like shame.

Quietly, into the blackness of the night, he whispers, “And I could never  _regret_ you, Mila. You’re just about the only thing that has ever been right in my life.”

I hold in a deep, wounded breath, blinking against fresh tears. I am never ashamed of him, but I am ashamed of myself because I know what he would think if I really did tell him about her, and so I hold her inside of myself, hold her where he cannot see her. It is better like that, I tell myself. I look at the dent in his wall, cast in silver from the moonlight. It is better, I tell myself, over and over.

Only the birds hear me, in the morning; they sing their tired old tunes and drown me out.

** II **

Sometime after his breakfast, the screen of his phone blooms; our spoons lay limp against our bowls, a mouthful of sugary cereal moulded into a cold slither of slime along the bumps of my throat once I swallow. He sits alongside me, his eyes latched onto that screen – its vibrations seem to seep into us and makes our organs tremble, our hands melt into puddles and our limbs become immobile, much too dense for us to lift. Somehow, he finds the strength and sweeps the phone from the table, presses it against his ear. He has become pale, the skin around his eyes is flecked in purple, the first bloom of a sleepless night. It seems that his mouth cannot form words, the sounds had been churned in those vibrations, chopped and diced so much that mere hums and coughs come out, instead.

Eventually, he strings those sounds together and says, “I’ll do it.”

I am washed away in his words, there is nothing left of me apart from the shreds of guilt, snippets of remorse. He does not regret me, but I am not so sure that I can believe him, anymore, because he looks at me and I find his eyelids have become curtains, his stare has become shrouded and cold behind their folds.

“I’ll find you after tonight,” he tells me.

“What did she ask you to do, Sweet Pea?”

“I’ll come and find you,” he says.

“I want to come with you.”

“I think it should only take a couple of hours, so I can call Birdie to bring you home,” he continues airily. He stands, collects our bowls even though we are not finished. He stumbles for the basin. “Or Max. Birdie has been teaching him how to drive, it might be good practice.”

He slips into the bathroom. There is nothing left of me. I hear the creaky faucets of the shower, the rust of the rail. I do not hear him, after that.

** III **

Cocooned in the warmth of his car, Birdie pulls out a box of cigarettes and tilts them toward me. I shake my head. He plops a cigarette between his lips and rolls the window down. I am still engulfed in the thick puffs of smoke which curl from his pursed lips. Slowly, we pull from Sunnyside and drift through the streets, which seem much too empty, much too full, all at once.

“Birdie,” I call out faintly, “will he be all right?”

He blows another ring of smoke from his puckered mouth. “You know, a lot of people think Pea is all brawn and no brains – must be that temper of his that makes them think that.”

I look at him, eyebrows furrowed.

Birdie glances at me and then looks out at the road, which crawls upward upon us like some sentient creature. “I sat with Pea in that office, Mila. I listened to what Penny put out there on that table for him to take. Pea listened, too, and he knew what was coming for him if he lay in bed with a Snake Charmer – not literally, I mean. But he knew what was coming and he still agreed – but he made no illusions about it.”

“I’m scared for him, Bird.”

“He can handle himself,” he replies, his stare flicking toward the mirror between us. “He has more strength in him than most people realise – people like Penny, for example. Penny looks for weakness. She thinks she found it in him. I can tell you that she is wrong on that one; more than _she_ realises.”

I smile weakly at him. I appreciate his words, especially because Birdie is never normally so mature and earnest.

He looks at me again. “For what it’s worth, Mila, I’m gonna drop you off and turn right back around, find him before he heads off. He won’t go into this thing alone, you know.”

“Thank you, Birdie,” I tell him sincerely. “Thank you. He won’t even tell me what she wants him to do.”

“Maybe it’s better that way,” he replies vaguely; this time, his eyes cannot seem to meet mine. _It is better_ , over and over.

I am not so sure, anymore.

** IV **

I hear the thump of small, light shoes once I slip into the hall of our house and sling my backpack onto the floor. Rosie darts from her bedroom and launches herself down the staircase. She leaps for me, latching her arms around my waist and snuggling against me. Her hold is so tight that it is almost painful, but I bend and grip her by the armpits, haul her upward and balance her on my hip – even if she really has grown so much that I imagine I might not be able to lift in her a couple of months, I know. She buries herself into the crook of my neck and I find myself unable to care much about the strain on my spine.

I drop onto the couch and let her babble and babble about her morning, my eyelids still drooping from sleepiness. I watch her pluck a DVD from the pile and grin tiredly once I spot the cover: _The Princess and the Frog_ – the film we had meant to watch before the raid and the night in the station. She hops onto the couch and leans against me again, smiling contently.

I feel my eyelids flicker shut occasionally, so overcome by a largely sleepless night that I can barely function. Rosie must notice, because she stretches upward and pecks my cheek lightly, so lightly that I hardly feel it at all. Like a secret that she thinks I cannot hear, she whispers, “I’m really glad the lady didn’t take you away yesterday, Mila. I’m glad you’re here. We’re like real sisters now, I think.”

I hug her close and surprise her, because she giggles and wraps her arms around me. I think of the police and Helena, the State Home and Penny, and then I remember what Sweet Pea had said: _at least you make it worth it._

** V **

Crackling sound and colour spills from the television and stirs me from a foggy sleep. I had dreamt of Sweet Pea in a forest, his frame lost between the flicker of the branches. Rosie sits on the wooden floorboards, rumbling to her dolls in a low, masculine voice once her Ken-Doll potters into her dollhouse and knocks over a chair in his clumsiness. Hastily, she scoops Barbie from the pile and makes her chase after him, shrieking incoherently, a high-heel thrown from her foot accidentally. Rosie scrambles to catch it and scolds Barbie for her carelessness.

Slowly, I climb the staircase. Between the rungs, I glimpse Ruth in the kitchen. She stirs melted chocolate around a bowl. She has decided to make brownies to soothe our souls after last night. She looks out the window, her eyes frosted and dazed. While I plod into my bedroom and pull off my clothes, tug pyjamas from my drawers and dress myself, I wonder if she thinks of him, out there. I fall into bed and wonder if she thinks of somebody else from her life before us – it is hard to imagine, but she must have had another life before us, in which she had always been with the Serpents, never quite fully initiated to membership but eternally accepted.

A little bit like me, I suppose.

** VI **

Somewhere along the line, the sun had been lost in the navy shroud of night and my curtains had been drawn shut. I find the blankets tucked around me, the door left ajar. I remain limp against my blankets and listen to the gentle hum of the house. I shuffle from my bed and reach for my jacket, fishing out my phone. I am disappointed to find it blank, not a single message. I flop against my pillows and let out a slow, withered sigh. I want to text him. I type it out, a quick and simple: _are you okay?_

** VII **

There is a thump in the hall. I hold still. There comes another dull, hard thump and a worried flurry of voices which drift into the hall, drift into the bedroom. Stumbling, I hop from tangled blankets and dart into the hall. Harsh, orange light smoulders from behind the living-room door, an island of colour which pricks the otherwise blackness of the hall. The frosted windowpanes of the front door are blurred in blobs of distant orange from the streetlights. I glance downward, distracted by a sudden wetness which soaks through my socks. I notice a trail of blackened liquid which stains the floorboards, its ash-colour dotted in little droplets. I bend and flick a fingertip into those beads and find my skin smeared in a much brighter strip of blood.

Thrown backward in fright, I jump at another low, miserable bleat of torment from the sitting-room. I trail toward it, intensely aware that I am unarmed, that there might be somebody unfamiliar stood between those flowerpots of fractured terracotta, those cracks in the drywall - but laughter blooms, along with the low mumble of unfamiliar voices. Carefully, I peek into the sitting-room, confused by the stoop of Ruth, her hands dipped into a bowl of lukewarm, pinkish water. She lifts a dampened cloth and brushes off crusted blood from the bruised skin of a boy whose long limbs stretch outward upon the couch.

He is so tall that his chunky boots dip over the arm of the couch. Ruth lifts his shirt, reveals a slash which cuts across the flesh of his stomach; it is a thin, raw cut which weeps in reddened wavelets, rippled from him through small laughs. Until, through the bloodshot squint of his left eyelid, narrowed into a pale shred of pupil, his stare latches onto mine, and his smile pales into a weakened frown, his laughter fades.

_Sweet Pea_.

Spat from torn lips, he mumbles through hoarseness and says, “Mila – Mila -…”

I feel faint, as if my legs are liquid and spill from my bones, splashed against the floorboards.

Distracted, I had not noticed the hunched silhouette of another stranger slumped against the wall with shoulders held tight, drawn toward him only by the rustle of his leather jacket. He turns from me, toward the kitchen. Stitched into the patch of his leather jacket, there is the coiled body of a serpent. 

Blown out in a weak, flaccid wheeze, Sweet Pea repeats, “ _Mila_!”

It strains him to say my name – strains him so much that Ruth places a hand against his chest to steady him once he coughs. I bump against the door, there is nothing left of me, what remains is lost in that liquid puddle made of all my limbs. A hand latches onto my arm and I flinch from it. It is the older Serpent, whose mouth forms words that my brain cannot seem to comprehend, smothered beneath a constant buzz of static. It had been like this once I saw Jughead beaten, too, I could hardly move at all, until Sweet Pea-…

_Sweet Pea_. He looks at me now and there is shame in his eyes, the shame he had been so worried about.

I hear him, the older Serpent. He has another towel in his hand, taken from the kitchen, I presume. It already has spots of blood soaked into its beige colour. He says, “Hey, Mila, maybe you oughta sit down, all right? Kid, are you even hearing me?”

I pull myself away from him and drop onto the floorboards, so hard that my kneecaps crack and I crawl toward him. Ruth drops the cloth into the basin and stands so that I can scoot closer to him. He drags his bloodshot eyeballs toward me in a slow roll, the left eyelid still half-clamped in a bruised squint. Then he spurts out a mouthful of spittle and blood blended together, but settles, his lips turning upward into a shaky smile. “Told you I would come and find you.”

“What _happened_ , Sweet Pea?” I ask shakily.

“She wanted me to attend this meeting with some guys. T-Thought I looked intimidating enough to keep them at bay. It worked, for a little while. Then the – the delivery went wrong – and it was a free-for-all kinda fight. She ran out before the other guys could do anything to her. That just l-left me, Birdie, and a few other Serpents to deal with her mess. Birdie made it out okay, more or less. Me and two others took the real brunt of it. He wanted to drive us to the hospital but-…Well, you know how I feel about hospitals, Mila.” His eyes trail downward toward my chest and I almost scold him until I catch his muffled laughter. “Well, how about that, _Honeybunch_?”

I realise that I am stood in a bright, garish yellow t-shirt with bold red print which does read: HONEYBUNCH, ridden upward at the stomach so just a small slip of skin peeks out, torn from the pile which Rosie had collected when they had prepared for my arrival and which I use for pyjamas. I roll my eyes at him. “You must be delirious from blood-loss to be joking about this, Pea.”

“Pea,” he repeats, grinning, his gums stained in blood. “No more  _Sweet_ , huh? Been around the Serpents too much, you’re picking up on all their habits.”

“Yeah, like taking in strays,” I murmur, brushing strands of hair from his forehead.

He smiles again. Still, I catch the tremble of his lips against the onslaught of pain.

“I can bring you some blankets, Sweet Pea,” I tell him quietly. “I’ll stay with you, down here. I’ll sleep beside you, okay? You won’t be alone.”

Stirred by the sound of his name, he blinks through dulled haziness and nods. He mumbles a small, hoarse _thank you_.

** VIII **

In my bedroom, I open the closet and pull out folded blankets from neat stacks. I inhale that flowery scent from the detergent. Ruth had prepared herself for many children, whether children brought from the system or Serpents in need of a place to stay for a couple of nights, she had bought clothes in all sizes, all shapes. She has other cupboards filled with fresh toothbrushes and blankets, more bed-sheets and even hairbrushes. _Just in case_ , she says.

I hear the door creak and turn to find that older Serpent stood there, seeming awkward and uncertain. His eyes trail toward the drawings pinned against my wall, from the other homes, and his mouth softens into a smile. He seems a lot warmer now, in the yellow light of my bedroom, his brown eyes are like pools of chocolate and the lines of his skin seem more familiar. He says, “Ruth told me that you moved around a lot before you got here.”

“Yeah,” I mumble, unsure of myself.

“I am so proud of her, you know,” he adds, almost absently, as if he had drifted off in his thoughts. “She always wanted to be a foster-parent.”

Confused, I furrow my eyebrows and shift uncomfortably. “I never saw you at the Whyte Wyrm before.”

He laughs and shakes his head. “I bet that place still hasn’t changed – still got that one leaky toilet, still got the same old drunks hanging around until dawn. I bet it hasn’t changed. But everything else has, right?”

I drink in his handsome face, dotted in freckles along the bridge of his nose. He might be in his late-thirties, but he seems more youthful than that because of his dark hair and dark eyes. He is tall, like Sweet Pea, he looms in every room, but his brawn is contained in that leather jacket. He shrinks himself, as if he does not want to be seen. All of his words swirl together, along with his appearance, and it occurs to me that he could be-…

“Ruth’s older brother,” he nods. “Michael.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, _oh_ ,” he repeats, grinning. “Guess it was kind of unexpected. I doubt she really told you much about me. It was my choice to stay away, anyway – wanted to give her the best chance at this whole foster-parent-gig and I was trying to clean up my rap-sheet and – well, trying to give it my best shot out here, you know?”

I nod and pile a couple of more blankets into my arms, cradle them close against me. I worry that Sweet Pea will be cold, or maybe too hot, and the indecision clouds my mind more than I would like. “Yeah,” I respond. “I understand. I want to keep my own files clean, too. How did you come to find Sweet Pea, then?”

“I know Penny Peabody, Mila. I know her very well. She landed me in that cell in the first place – let me hang for crimes that weren’t _entirely_ mine. I heard about Sweet Pea and this deal with Peabody. It seems she has managed to catch more than enough of the younger Serpents, roped them into doing her dirty work while she sits in her office and laughs. I contacted Birdie, tried to find out more about what she wanted from Sweet Pea. Turns out I had pretty good timing and Birdie was already trying to get Sweet Pea out of there before things really went south. I just made sure that it didn’t.”

There is an implication behind his words that suggests that, for all his efforts to straighten out his record, Michael had resorted to certain tactics that would be frowned upon by most probation-officers. There is shame in his voice. I am more than tired of shame in us when Peabody seems not to suffer from it at all.

“Thank you, Michael.”

He watches me for a moment longer. “Mila, I made the choice to let Peabody know that I am back in Riverdale – and I made it equally clear that I want her _out_ of it. She won’t like that. She’ll show me how much she doesn’t like it. But I just couldn’t stand by and watch her ruin the lives of the next generation of Serpents. If I did, there wouldn’t be any Serpents left in Riverdale. So, I’m gonna fight her on this. I’m gonna make sure these Serpents get a better chance than me and my friends ever did because of Penny Peabody. Most of them are still in that prison. Most of them won’t ever get out of it. Now, if I go against her, she might retaliate. You know that, don’t you?”

I look down at the blankets in my arms, but my thoughts are drawn to Sweet Pea, his bloodied mouth and wheezing breaths. I stare into Michael’s dark eyes, determined. “Oh, I know – and I’m gonna fight her too. Whatever it takes, I want her to know that she will never hurt him again.”

Michael smiles. “Ruth was right to say you were a smart kid. Strong, too.”

“Peabody will learn that too."

** IX **

The blankets are piled into a makeshift bed, the pillows tossed together to soften the harshness of the floorboards. Sweet Pea drapes a hand from the edge of couch for me to hold; he drifts between sleep and dazed awareness, but Ruth has stitched his wounds and cleaned his cuts. I had been worried about infections and pain, but she had merely glanced at Michael while she worked and muttered, ' _I had enough practice with this one to handle a couple of stitches, Mila_ ' _._ Sweet Pea is quiet, now, he allows me to bring him glasses of water and hold them against his lips and sip slowly, so that nothing hurts him.

Sometime after midnight, he stirs from his sleep and mutters, “I should do this more often.”

“Do what?” I mumble sleepily, shifting around and squeezing his hand very, very lightly. 

“Get my ass beaten so I can be taken care of by a very, _very_ cute nurse,” he slurs.

I laugh despite myself, although I am careful not to disturb Michael and Ruth – and especially not Rosie. I am not sure that Sweet Pea could handle her in his state. Michael has taken my bed for the night, and seemed a little amused to swap a concrete cell for lilac wallpaper and floral patterns. “Have the meds kicked in, then?”

“Meds, what meds? If I am high on anything, it is _you_ , Mila-…”

“Somebody definitely knocked you around, Pea, they’ve made you way too soft.”

“I was kinda worried there for a while,” he tells me, his eyes unfocused. “I thought I was gonna be killed in there. I thought I was never gonna see you again.”

I feel my hazy, warm smile drip from me like wet-paint trickling along a canvas. It had been too soon, his pain, his suffering. Stupidly, I had expected that Penny would not summon him for a couple of days, but she had called upon him almost immediately. Pulled those puppet-strings, made him hop around for her, her little play-thing. I think of our morning in his trailer and the tears return, but there comes no sound with them, not even a sniffle. The tears leak from the corner of my eyes and slide down my temples, cold and slimy, traced around my ears and lost in the tangles of my hair.

“Mila?” he whispers.

“I’m here.”

“Okay,” he says softly. “Okay, Mila.”

** X **

“I never told you about her because I think of it like a betrayal,” I murmur into the darkness, once I am sure he has drifted into slumber. “If I tell you about those things she said – all the times she told me that I was stupid, and it was my fault that I was in the system – it makes her sound like she was a bad person, you know? She used to tell me that my Dad never wanted me around because I was such a bad kid. I screamed too much, I fought all the time."

I hear the hum of the refrigerator, the soft ticking of the clock in the kitchen.

"I only did it," I continue, "because I wanted them to listen to me. I swear I never really wanted to hurt anyone. And she was never a bad person – nobody listened to her, either, so maybe she was just full of anger, like me, and she never knew what to do with it. But she was never _bad_. We used to dance together, sing and jump around her living-room when I could never do that in the other homes. We used to eat ice-cream together and she told me all these funny stories. I believed them, when I was a kid.”

His body is still. I match his even breaths.

“She was meant to show them that she could take care of me, and then I could stay with her permanently. But she messed up sometimes. I think they knew that she used to say mean stuff to me. I never told them, but they knew about it anyway. She got into arguments with my social-workers, she used to turn up late for our appointments to discuss our progress and all this other stuff. And she'd say mean things to them like she did to me. So, I guess that’s how they knew. I never asked her why she did that. I guess I was afraid to ask her. She had a bedroom ready for me, we painted it together. I feel like if I say these things aloud, it means I’m betraying her. But I loved her anyway, Pea. I still do. I really do. You understand that, don’t you?”

Seconds pass in the soft tick of that clock, over and over. Then, I feel it; he squeezes my hand tight and says, "I'm here, Mila." 


	12. chapter twelve

** chapter twelve: summertime and the livin’s easy **

* * *

 

Somewhere around dawn, he hauls himself from the couch, his breaths stuttered and heavy from the effort. He still cannot lift his shoulders high enough, his chest ripples against a sudden blister of pain. I stand alongside him and hold out his shirts, gently guide his arms into the sleeves, button them for him. He is too stubborn for more than that, he refuses to allow me to do more than help him with his shirts and chunky, studded bracelets. Penny has not bothered him; he sleeps in our home and his bruises flower into paler shades of trauma. The plasters crinkle against the curves of his smile, his cuts harden into crusted scabs and, eventually, soften into reddened marks against his skin. Soon, Ruth plucks out his stitches, plops the snipped threads into a small bow and smooths a cool, dampened cloth against the fresh dots of blood.

The Serpents visit him, clustered in small groups with their arms laden in gifts like chains to loop from his belt and new shirts and even a gift-card for his favourite tattoo-parlour in the depths of the Southside. Rosie has become attached to Pea, she brings him orange-juice in the mornings and shares her chocolate-bars with him in the evening. She never disturbs him if she finds him asleep, because Ruth had explained to her that Pea needs some rest. She plays quietly, she presses herself onto her tippy-toes as if the slightest creak of the floorboards might stir him from his dreams.

I know Sweet Pea likes her, too. He lets her clamber onto the couch and settle beside him. He even lets her rest against his chest in the crook of his arm, just so she can show him her colouring-books and the stories that she has written in her loopy scrawl. Her handwriting has only marginally improved and Sweet Pea often helps her learn her letters because he is mostly confined to the couch under the strict orders Ruth had doled out for him. He has a soft spot for kids, I know. There is a fond light which blooms in his eyes once he spots Rosie in a wild rush toward him after she returns from school. It makes him think of his own little sister, Bug. It makes him think of better times.

** ii **

One night, Rosie brings him another drawing. He flutters open purple-stained eyelids, half-asleep from some medication, the swelling on his face now mostly healed. He lifts his arm for her to crawl beneath and snorts at her excited leap toward him, even though Ruth quickly scolds her from the hall and warns her not to be rough with him. He shrugs off all those warnings, he never turns Rosie away even if I can tell he still hurts from another cut or bruise. He takes the drawing from her and I notice an odd shift in his expression, his stare latched onto this wonky, purple outline of our house and the wobbly circle that forms the sun. I pull myself from my armchair across from them and lift Rosie in order to sit with them, place her on my lap and feel her burrow herself against my chest, because she likes to be held close.

I can see her doodle better, now. She has drawn little figures stood in our garden, stick-figure hands and stick-figure smiles – and I can tell that the first little character is Ruth, with two splotches of pink against her cheeks and Rosie is plopped right alongside her in a flowery, triangular skirt. Then, I am stood in my green jacket, my hair made of scratchy, inky lines. I hold her hand with just three narrow lines for fingers and my smile is a semi-circle drawn in a rosy-red colour. Finally, Sweet Pea is there. He is not drawn with bruises, but he does wear his leather-jacket and she drew a squiggly, green snake on his chest with its bright-red tongue.

I look at him and find his eyes are coated in a glassy sheen. He asks, “Can I keep this, Rosie?”

“I made it for you,” she answers. “Do you _really_ like it, or are you just being nice?”

“I love it,” he replies honestly. “I want to put it right over my bed. What do you think, Mila? Would it look good there?”

Rosie wiggles out from my chest and stares into my eyes, her small fists scrunched into my shirt. I look over at Sweet Pea and grin at him. “I think it would look perfect there, Sweet Pea.”

Rosie buries herself against me again, satisfied with our response to her art. Sweet Pea grins at me and turns back to the drawing, his eyes drinking in his little stick-figure doppelgänger; he looks at the small version of me beside him and smiles contently, so much so that it makes my chest swell and makes my cheeks flush in the small splotches of pink that Rosie had drawn for Ruth.

** iii **

Sometime in the evening, his phone beeps from his jacket across the living-room. Both of us hold deathly still. His hand had been wrapped around mine, his thumb brushing soft, absent-minded strokes against my wrist, but his limbs are frozen now, his eyes are fixated on that jacket. Rosie dozes between us, her head lolled against his chest. He does not dare to lift himself to answer it in case he disturbs her – and in case that text disturbs us more.

Slowly, I pull myself from him. I can sense his reluctance to release me, but his hand slips from mine once I stand and force myself to find his phone in his pockets and pull it out, an awful anxiety fluttering around my chest like some wild creature let loose, thumping against my lungs with clenched fists, climbing the rungs of my rib-cage like a ladder.

He watches me, his skin flushed in the colours of the film still playing on the television. He does not ask the question. I hear it and answer anyway.

“It isn’t her." The words seem to hush that creature in my chest and makes it settle into the pit of my stomach like a stone and wait there, dormant – it is not her, because it _could have been_ her. It _will_ be, eventually. I take a shaky breath. “Toni – um, Toni just text to say that there will be a race between the Serpents and Ghoulies and-…”

“And what?” he asks.

Stunned, I look at him with wide eyes. “And _Jughead_ is the one driving for the Serpents.”

I suppose that Sweet Pea is just relieved it was not _her_ , summoning him to do her bidding from some darkened hole in the Southside, because he lets his head fall backward against the couch, his lips lifting into an amused smirk. “That little squirt can reach the pedals, huh? Thought he might need a booster-seat…Well, ask her for the details. We’ll be there.”

“We will?”

“Oh, yeah,” he grins. “Nurse Mila, will you allow me a day-pass out of this hospital?”

I roll my eyes. “I think you would need to ask Nurse Ruth, first.”

“Are you kidding? I’m pretty sure that’d land me back in hospital with some fresher wounds if I tried that.”

“Sweet Pea!”

“All right, all right, I’ll pull the puppy-dog look. We could use some fun, Mila. Nothing beats a good race between the Serpents and Ghoulies, you know. You think I should really buy Jughead a booster-seat, though?”

“Good to know your sense of humour wasn’t knocked out of you, Pea.”

“Nah, just a couple of teeth. And maybe a kidney.”

“Well, you seem to be doing fine without it,” I reply tersely. I toss a cushion from the armchair at him and snort when it bumps against his face and lands on his chest, just to the left of Rosie. “I’ll ask Ruth. Spare you trying to get up without hurting yourself.”

“Oh, you really _do_ care,” he mutters sarcastically, gripping the cushion and tossing it right back at me.

 “Nope. Just wanted to make sure you don’t wake Rosie, that’s all.”

** iv **

Faint clouds of dust billow from the dirt-road and coat our clothes in a fine powder. While we approach the other Serpents, Sweet Pea surprises me and slings his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close against him. I follow his stare toward the Ghoulies clustered around their own cars, gaunt faces hollowed even more in the glare of sunlight. Blown from a bunch of speakers, music ripples around this clearing and seems to cocoon us in an odd, hazy warmth. I am pulled from Sweet Pea by Toni and Mags, whose hands quickly clamp onto my arms and steer me toward the other female Serpents stood in a small group just a couple of feet away. He shrugs it off with a grin, because Birdie, Max and Fangs surround him. Fangs claps his shoulder in a brotherly way – then realises his mistake once Sweet Pea flinches, about to apologise when Sweet Pea tackles him into another wrestling-match despite his pain.

I roll my eyes and turn toward Mags, Toni, and the other girls. I know almost all of them from school, like Willow and Cosma, Delphine and Babs. I feel a rush of excitement once the girls pull me into their circle and I accept each hug, each commiseration for what happened to Sweet Pea.

“Good excuse to put on a Nurse costume,” Mags smirks, wiggling her eyebrows.

I snort. “What is this obsession with Nurses?”

“So, Sweet Pea _did_ think the same thing!” Babs giggles.

This time, I do not shy away from their jokes - I still blush, sure, but I shrug them off. I am more at ease with them and especially with myself. The girls soon start to tell me all about what I missed and somebody presses a soda into my hands. Somehow, I find myself sitting on the hood of a car, listening intently while Delphine tells me all about this drama with Jughead and the Ghoulies. In the middle of it, while Babs and Willow cut in to correct Delphine and while Cosma braids Toni’s hair, Mags rests her head against my shoulder and I feel the heaviness of the sun against my skin and the warmth of hers along with it.

Just behind the girls, I spot Betty Cooper. She watches us and her stare lingers on their jackets, their friendly hugs and jokes. She seems wistful and clasps her hands together – I think she might sniffle, too, because she lifts a hand to rub at her nose and she blinks quickly. I realise that she has noticed me. I cast a wary smile at her, because the last time that I had seen her had been the night that Jughead was beaten, which seems so far away now. Startled, she looks behind herself, finds nobody, and then points at herself with wide eyes. I snort and nod, which makes her blush like I often do, before she hesitantly lifts a hand and waves at me.

“Are you smiling at _Betty Cooper_?” Delphine asks, nose crinkled. “The Northsider who cares so deeply about the Southside since – like, last _Tuesday_?”

I know she is too far away to hear Delphine. Still, she looks down at the dirt and scuffs it with her boot, perhaps aware that the Serpents are not fond of her, especially not the girls, whose eyes turn toward her with distrust.

“Maybe she just feels lonely,” I murmur.

Cosma glances at me doubtfully. “The Princess of the Northside - _lonely_? You see all those other Northsiders around her, right?”

She tilts her head and I count the Northsiders – one of them is _Kevin, from the Northside_ , as he introduced himself. The other turns around and I feel myself grow cold: _Reggie_. He has this slick grin and slouched shoulders, sipping at a soda. I remember all of those awful things that his little sister told Rosie and I slide from the hood of this car, boots thumping against the dirt. Toni hastily grips my arm and turns me right around, blocks me against the car.

“Don’t you think you and Sweet Pea already have enough problems with Peabody, Mila?” she asks, her tone firm and her stare unwavering.

“He upset Rosie,” I tell her. I can tell that the words came out too harshly and it makes me purse my lips shamefully. “Sorry, Toni.”

She pulls me into a hug. “We want you here, Mila. Don’t let a Northsider ruin everything and take you away from us, okay? I’m not sure even Peabody could get you out of an assault charge.”

“Not that you couldn’t take Reggie,” Babs adds.

“Even in the nurse costume,” Mags says, smirking wickedly. “Which would probably Sweet Pea’s ultimate dream, actually-…”

“ _Mags_ ,” Toni groans, her arm still around my shoulder. “Is your mind ever out of the gutter, or do you just live there permanently? Come on, forget the Northsiders – Jughead is about to race the Ghoulies and we want the best seats in the house, right?”

I trail alongside them, although I still glance over at Reggie and the other Northsiders. I soon find Sweet Pea in the crowd of other Serpents who examine the engines and test the gears just before the race. He stands tall, he wears his jacket with such pride. He takes a drink from Fangs and leans against a car, chats with them all. I rest against him and it just feels as if there is no Penny Peabody in our life, here. There are no police chases and no beatings – just a couple of kids stood around in a dirt-road, drawn here by some distant connection.

And then I think about all that time I spent mute and silent in the homes just so that I could clean my record and find somewhere more permanent. I think about how that old Mila used to sit in her bedroom and read books about other kids in other worlds whose friends were always there and whose families were a little more functional than mine – but now my family is different and none of them are blood-related, anyway. I guess the blood-part doesn't matter for me. I can read those books and not feel so lonely. 

I can be myself here.

** v **

Buried under a mountain of blankets, I dream of that same dirt-road that night, dream of its scattered pebbles tossed around in the rush of the cars. Jughead had technically not lost, because the race was cut off by the police, which made us all bolt from the track just to avoid arrest, _again_. In the dream, the pebbles wobble from a vibration in the earth, over and over, until I am jolted from my sleep. Dimly, I pat around the bed. Sweet Pea sleeps on the couch downstairs. Now that he is better, Ruth is not too keen on us spending _every_ single night in the same bed. For a moment, I had forgotten that and reached out for him.

Then I hear the vibration again, the buzz of my phone and I frantically try to find it. I am aware of the darkness and decide that it is probably still only around 3A.M. Finally, I find my phone under my pillow, half-wedged between the mattress and the headboard.

Blearily, I click a button and hold the phone to my ear, croaking out a tired, “Hello?”

“Mila!”

I feel that creature awoken, sprung from my stomach, thrown upward into my chest so it blocks all the sounds that I want to push from my throat once I hear the voice of Penny Peabody on the other end.

“Feeling a little tired? I know, I know – I called you at a bad time, but I just _could not sleep_ after I realised something tonight – why should it just be Sweet Pea doing all these deals? Why not a bit of _equality_ here? After my last… _request_ , I’m sure he would be glad for a little respite, right?”

“How did you get my number?” I ask numbly. “Why are you even doing this to us?”

“Last I checked, it was _Sweet Pea_ who came to _me_ , Mila,” she mocks in a sickly-sweet voice. “‘Oh, _please_ help my little girlfriend before they send her away, _please_!’”

Helplessly, I say, “Please, just-…”

“Wow, you sound just like him,” she laughs. “Spending too much time with little Sweet Pea? Well, like I said, I had the greatest idea. While he recovers, _you_ can do the next run.”

“Are you _insane_? I-…”

“Oh, you won’t be alone, honey. I found the perfect companion for you – I sure do hope Sweet Pea won’t be jealous, though…”

“Who?” I ask nervously.

“Cute little kid, total nerd – but he dresses pretty well, I gotta give him that.”

“ _Who_?”

“Gideon Grant. Ever met the kid? Nervous little guy, but like I said – _cute_.”

_Gideon_. We had only hung out at the arcade last week and I had no idea he was aware of Penny Peabody, let alone one of those trapped beneath her boot. I swallow, but my tongue feels much too heavy, my throat has dried out into a desert.

I must be too quiet for her, because she continues, “I thought I would be offering you and your little boyfriend a real kindness here, Mila. Unless, of course, you _want_ Sweet Pea to be sent back out there right after his last ordeal, hm?”

“No,” I blurt. I quickly hold the phone closer, glancing toward my door, still left ajar. I don’t want anybody to hear this, especially not Sweet Pea. I had watched him suffer for the past few days, barely able to pull on a shirt without pain in his eyes. So, I lower my voice and mumble, “I’ll do it.”

“Sorry, what was that, Mila? Connection must be bad, I couldn’t quite make that out.”

I grit my teeth and force myself to repeat, “ _I’ll do it_.”


	13. chapter thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ: TRIGGER WARNING: some sexual themes and aggression in this chapter, please be aware of that, if you wish to skip it, it happens in the part IV as I number my sections. It is nothing extremely graphic because this is Riverdale, however in the second season there is some sexual abuse mentioned (well, not just here, but with Nick St Clair). This might come into play with Veronica/Mila in later chapters if I continue to write into the later part of season 2 (it gets harder to watch in the later parts, just being honest lol). 
> 
> Otherwise I would really appreciate some feedback or any kind of response to let me know if you liked/hated it. It is a darker chapter and I was even considering deleting it and writing something more positive, but the characters in Riverdale overcome some really dark, dark stuff. So, I gave it my best shot. Soon enough, the Southside students move to the Northside anyway which will be a bit more fun and lighthearted (I think). 
> 
> Thank you for the kudos, reviews, etc. I appreciate every single bit of feedback to help me in my writing!

_chapter thirteen: love is a doing word_

* * *

 

Chirped out in a crisp ringtone, the instructions are sent in a curt message from Penny Peabody. The bleached white colour of the screen stains the letters into my brain, etches each loop and curl until I can recite it all from memory. I am sat in bed, hands scrunched into my hair, scratching at my scalp as if Penny Peabody is just a little parasite on its surface that I can peel off – but it is never that simple, not for people like us. So, I plot it all out. I stare at the ceiling and envision a complex little map, strung together with colourful threads. I will tell Ruth that Toni wants a sleepover and tell Toni that I am with Sweet Pea. Ruth never really bothers me once I am with friends, she only texts every couple of hours. I decide that I will tell Sweet Pea that I am with Gideon – because I _will_ be with Gideon, and this makes it feel as if it is less of a deception.

Out of the blue, I think of Rosie. I think of what I had told her: _but you do remember that Ruth told us we should always tell the truth, right?_

Dampness blossoms on my cheeks, until those faint trickles flower into heavier rivers. I scrunch my blankets in tight fists and smear them against this downpour, but my flesh is hot and stained in a ruddy colour from the riverbed left behind. I think of those bruises which are still scattered around his body, his wheezy breaths, his hunched silhouette and weary eyes – and the worst of it is that I know – I _know_ \- Sweet Pea would do it all over again if it meant that I could stay in Riverdale with him. I know what must be done, now.

** II **

Yawning through the curtains in slow yellow, dawn fills the bedroom in its cool light. The threads of the plan unfurl from a tightened knot and I find myself more determined. I snatch jeans and a shirt from my wardrobe, tug on some chunky black boots and my green jacket before I take the staircase and slip into the musty cocoon of the living-room. The drapes are still drawn shut, its space confined in dense blackness. I stumble over blankets and pillows to the couch, then pat around for Sweet Pea.

I hear a soft groan once I accidentally bump against his face. He catches my wrist before I can pull away and mumbles, “Five more minutes, Mila.”

“Now how could you have possibly known it was me?” I joke lightly.

Delicate lines crinkle the skin around his mouth, his lips pulled upward into a lazy smile. “I know your footsteps now. I know what you sound like. Did you dream about me?”

“Yes,” I murmur. “I did.”

I brush at the strands of hair against his forehead, because I feel an intense need to hold him, especially if I follow those orders which Penny had sent – Sweet Pea had barely made it out of his last run and I don’t know if I will made it out of mine. Perhaps lulled into sleep by the gentle strokes of my hand against his skin, he drifts off soon enough. I watch him for a little while, distracted by a swirl of worried thoughts.

I am not sure that I really understand love in the way that it is written in all of those old books and songs. I used to think that love was just a feeling, a rush of warmth, affection. I used to think that the only person on this earth who really loved me was my Grandmother. She never said it, but I still think she did, in her own way. I think nobody ever taught my Grandmother how to show love, the way everyone else shows it. I doubt she thought there was such a thing as _real_ love; maybe that is what hurts me most of all, whenever I think of her now. I doubt she believed in those old books and songs.

But I know that Ruth and Rosie love me, and I think I can feel it.

I feel it in those mornings just before school when Ruth braids my hair and she never pulls or tugs too hard because she never wants it to hurt. I feel it whenever she hums a song and then fumbles with the words because she can never seem to remember them. I feel it whenever she laughs and then smiles at me. I feel it whenever she gives me those brief, reassuring squeezes on my hand, my arm, my shoulder whenever I am nervous or worried. Sometimes, she does it just to remind me that she is there – that I am not alone anymore.  

I feel it whenever Rosie stirs from her accidental naps on the couch after a film. She blinks those little eyes around the room until she finds me, and she seems to slump in relief. I feel it whenever she cries and the only thing that will soothe her is being in my arms, held against my chest because she likes to be babied, likes to be cuddled. I feel it whenever she tells me that I can help her feed Spot and Sunny, her little fishes, because she trusts me to sprinkle out _just_ enough flakes for them.

So, I am not sure that I could write about it in a book or a song like all of those other people. But I think I _feel_ it.

Sweet Pea shifts around sleepily and lets out a sigh; the heat of his breath curls into the palm of my hand, still pressed against his cheek to brush aside his hair. I think – I _know_ that he loves me. He holds that teddy-bear I had gotten him from the arcade in his trailer, alongside his bed. He has always kept his promises, always kept his word. He never changes how he acts with me in front of his friends, never pretends not to care just because he is a Serpent and there is a reputation to uphold. He listens, too, he listens even if I ramble about nothing, he listens – and it seems so small, so minute that it is hardly worth mentioning, but it matters for me.

Nobody ever heard me, before. He hears me now.  

He shows that he loves me, but I _never_ want Peabody or the beatings to be something that must be a part of it. I never want him to feel that he must suffer just for me.

So, I shake his shoulders. I shake him and shake him until his eyelids flicker and he blinks at me, brows furrowed. I feel butterflies in my stomach, feel them flutter upward into my chest, pouring from my mouth once I say, “Sweet Pea, I love you.”

Dumbly, he stares at me; his hair is tousled, his eyes crusted in dim haziness and confusion, before his expression moulds itself into one of surprise. He croaks, “What?”

I doubt myself for just a moment. I hear the words of my Grandmother float from somewhere inside of me, as if each syllable she had ever said has reached upward and snatched the butterflies, torn them apart. I hear her say, _who would ever take a kid like you? Are you stupid, Mila, do you ever think before you act? You know, this is why your father could never handle you and this is why-…_

I force them downward. I remember what Sweet Pea had asked once, in his trailer: _do you ever think that maybe the things your Grandmother told you make you think like that?_

“I love you. I just wanted you to know that,” I tell him. “I wanted you to know it because I never really say stuff like that and last night I just – I was just thinking a lot about the things you and I have done together, done _for_ each other – all those things that _you_ have done for _me_. I just wanted to tell you. But you never need to say it back because then it would just be because you feel you _have_ to do it. But I’m doing it because I really want to tell you.”

Mutely, he pulls himself upward and sits against the couch with this weirdly vacant expression. Then, his eyebrows draw together again as if he is thinking hard, his mouth held in this tight pout. I watch him and wonder just what flits through his brain with a face like that, just before he says, “I think the only other person who ever told me that they love me in my life is my little sister, Bug. She told me just before my Mom took her out of her Riverdale – took her from me. She told me she loves me.”

“A lot of people love you, Sweet Pea. I just don’t think people say it all the time, and maybe it doesn’t _need_ to be said out loud all the time for it to be there,” I say quietly. “I know who cares about me, anyway.”

“I do.”

I snort and grin at him. “Well, I know _that_ , Pea-…”

“No, I mean – I mean I love you,” he says. “I do love you.”

Understanding settles between us, almost like some tangible thing; like we could just sit here and smile at each other like goofballs for the rest of the day and it would be just fine. Only, we hear the distant creak of wooden floorboards and the soft voices of Ruth and Rosie. Rosie never likes to wash her hair, but she loves to splash around in the bath for an hour while Ruth fruitlessly tries to shampoo her curly locks. There comes a much more masculine voice and I suppose Michael has been woken up by all the noise, because I hear his boots against the stairs and his movements in the kitchen a couple of seconds later. He disappears into the hallway and out the front door.

“Why did you tell me today?” Sweet Pea asks suddenly.

“Does it bother you?”

“Bother me?” he repeats with a snort. “Mila, you just made me the happiest guy in Riverdale. I just – I wondered why you thought about us so much last night. Are you worried about Peabody?”

I swallow the bitter urge to blurt out all that she had sent me in that message. Instead, I shrug and pluck at my sleeves. “I just wanted to tell you.”

“Can you say it again?”

Surprised, my eyes flit upward to meet his dark stare, wondering if he is making fun of me because his tone had been weirdly subdued. Yet, I find his eyes are like pools of apprehension, he swallows and looks away from me, as if he is embarrassed for having asked at all. I wait until he looks at me again, and then I say, “I love you, Sweet Pea.”

It is a slow, slow little smile which spreads across his lips. He looks as if he can just barely believe it, as if I might take it back at any moment if he moves too suddenly and looks away. So, I say it again. I will say it until he can really believe in it. I say it because I look at him and I see the shadow of Penny Peabody looming right behind him, like some grim creature, she sits here with us.

I say it all the more just to drown her out.

** III **

The plan unfolds like this: I stuff a bunch of clothes into a backpack and tell Ruth that Toni wants a sleepover at Sunnyside with the other girls, which relaxes her because she knows that the Serpents are there. Then, I send a quick text-message to Toni and tell her that I will be with Sweet Pea if she needs me. I tell Sweet Pea that Gideon had an argument with his father and just wants to get some stuff off his chest. Sweet Pea looks as if he might offer to come along with me because of the late hour, but Rosie reminds him that he promised to watch some more films with her.

_I’ll meet you at Sunnyside later. I’ll come and find you_ , I promise him.

I slip out into the dark, black streets of the Southside, its cold air filled with the scent of dew and rain from a light drizzle. I feel relief that this first part had all worked out. I feel guilt that it only worked because I had lied my way through it.

Gideon waits at the end of my street for the next part. He had driven over to the Southside in an expensive, sleek black car that he quickly tells me belongs to his father, who is now at an important dinner with important people in the Northside. _I-Investors_ , Gideon stutters. Awkwardly, we sit in the cool, iced-blue interior of this car and the radio bumbles between us about a murder in another town and then a promotion for garden plants in the flower-shop and it all seems to be in some foreign, unfamiliar language that washes right over us. He pulls out of our neighbourhood and we cruise through empty, ghostly streets.

“How did she get you?”

Gideon flinches like a frightened rabbit, his hands clamped around the wheel. “What?”

“Peabody. How did she get you into this?”

“Oh. Oh, um – my Mom was in some trouble…She bought…She bought _stuff_ from some bad people,” he explains uncomfortably. “The kind of people who are happy to break kneecaps to get what they want. Penny promised to pay them off if I – did some stuff for her. I just wanted to make sure my Mom is safe. She does things impulsively, she has some…some problems.”

“Couldn’t you have asked your Dad for help or anything?”

Gideon gapes at me. “My _Dad_? As if he would ever understand!. Besides, the deal is made now. All we need to do is meet these guys and just – just get it over with. I heard how she got you – how she got Sweet Pea.”

“Southside gossip reaches the Northside that fast, huh?”

He shrugs. “Gossip makes its way around _all_ of Riverdale, no matter what side you’re on. Nothing stays buried in this town. Nothing ever stays dead.”

** IV **

Gideon pulls into a parking-lot across town, because we are supposed to meet some other guys and then the delivery will take place. It sounds quite simple like that, but I am more worried about who these _guys_ really are. Would they be the same guys who had beaten Sweet Pea so badly? The same guys willing to hurt Gideon’s mother? Nervously, I lean against the hood of the car and feel Gideon settle beside me, our movements jittery and our mouths struck mute from fear. We jump at the slightest flash of headlights, skittish whenever we hear the distant shriek of a car-alarm or even some honking. I wonder if Sweet Pea had been this scared and another rush of guilt hits me for all he has been through because of me.

Then it comes – the slow crawl of a van into the parking-lot. Two burly, tall men step out onto the tarmac and I feel as if I might just bolt from them. Both are heavily tattooed, but most Serpents have tattoos – no, it is their gaunt expressions, hollowed-out cheekbones and thin, wrinkled mouths which frighten me, because it reminds me of the Ghoulies and especially War-Boy. I swallow hard and look at Gideon, nodding for him to slip around the back of the car and pull out those boxes he had been given by Peabody the night beforehand.

While he does this, the men approach and those wrinkled mouths curl into frothing grins. “Girly, girly,” one tuts. “Out this late, alone?”

“Peabody sent us,” I state flatly. I want to rid myself of all this fear and pretend that nothing bothers me. Especially not _them_.

“Peabody sends little schoolgirls to do her dirty work, now?” the other asks. He has a star etched beneath his left eye and a cluster of lines drawn on his cheek, but most of his tattoos look like the handiwork of children with stick-figure outlines. I think of the drawings clipped over my desk and feel nauseous because of it. “Well, fine by us, right, Snowy?”

Snowy has pale skin, whitish tufts of hair, his scalp coated in weird tattoos shaped like screaming faces and there are names over his eyebrows: _MARIA_ and _SOFIA_. “Fine by us,” he repeats. His eyes swallow me in their sick, blackened colour. “Fine by us. Do you wanna party with us later, girl? Try out all this great stuff Peabody is bringing us, huh?”

Peabody had not told us what was in there, but neither myself nor Gideon were stupid enough to think it was anything other than what Snowy implies – and it makes my stomach churn, makes me stumble my words and stutter out, “N-No, just the d-delivery – that’s all we’re here to do.”

The other man takes a sly step forward. I hear Gideon fumbling with the boxes. The man glances behind me and croons, “Careful there, boy, we want that stuff delivered properly, you got it? When these deliveries don’t work out for us, we usually gotta have compensation, right?”

His eyes drift toward me. His lips peel open wide, like the skin of some rotten fruit. It is supposed to be a smile. I know we have made even more of a mistake, now. He takes another step. I blank on whether I am supposed to move away from him or stand my ground. He is not like War-Boy, I realise, a schoolboy who can be shooed away from me by the Serpents. There are no Serpents here. Just Gideon and I and these two strangers whose mouths foam from excitement at the prospect of violence – and I can tell that they want some fun, want some aggression or _something_ – something that I almost grasp before Gideon reappears with three boxes in his hands.

He drops them in front of them and says, “Okay, that’s it.”

“That’s it?” Snowy repeats. “The boy is telling us that this is it, Stone. Was it really Peabody giving the orders, or you, boy?”

Stone lifts his hand and touches my hair. I am struck dumb, unable to open my mouth to tell him to take a step away from us. I glance at Gideon and find his skin flushed in that same beetroot colour that it had been outside of the stationary-shop that first time we met on the Northside, before Reggie and his friends had hounded us.

“Soft,” Stone murmurs beneath his breath. His hand drops to my cheek. “Where’d you get this bruise, kid?”

“The delivery is over,” I grind out. “You got what you asked for.”

Snowy drags his cold stare from Gideon and looks at me. “First the boy tells us how it is, and now the girl tells us how it is. Did I get the order of things wrong here, Stone? Are we not the clients? You know that whole thing about keeping the _customer_ happy?”

“Leave her alone,” Gideon mumbles.

“Excuse me?” Snowy drawls, his eyes alight in excitement all over again.

“I said, just leave her alone,” Gideon says, more forcefully this time. He moves toward Stone, as if he might push him away from me, but Snowy is quick and darts for him. He lands a punch, right into Gideon’s face and throws him onto the tarmac. I let out a shriek and push forward to help him, but Stone grips my arm so tight that I feel as if the bone might snap beneath him, my knees bending against the pain.

I reach out my other hand to scratch at him and kick, but he punches me right into the stomach and my breath leaves me. He hauls me up, half-balanced against his chest. He grips my chin in his hands, forces me to look at him. He slaps at my mouth. His spiked ring catches my lip and cuts it.

“Now look what you did! You’re a pretty girl, why would you want me to ruin that face of yours-…”

He leans in as if he might press his lips against mine and I prepare myself to slam my skull against his if he tries-…

“Stone, Snowy!”

Startled, we stand motionless, aware that there is now somebody behind us all. Stone does not remove his hand, but he does shift around to face this stranger across the parking-lot who had called out to us. I look and find there is not just one person, but _four_. Even in the darkness, I can make out Jughead as one of them, and my heart pounds against my chest. I see the taller silhouette beside him and panic that Sweet Pea has found out somehow, but the silhouette steps into the bleached floodlights of a store and I realise that is it not Sweet Pea at all-…

It is Archie Andrews.

Michael leads the front, another Serpent right alongside him. He has dark eyes, dark hair. He walks with purpose, like Michael.

Michael calls out again and says, “You should take your hand off her – that is, if you want to keep that hand, Stone.”

Stone grins. His yellowed teeth are finished off with blackened strips around the gums, his lips furl against it. “You gotta be kidding me. Is this _your_ kid, Michael? Huh. They allowed you some conjugal visits, my friend?”

My cheeks burn and I feel embarrassed even if his comment it was not directed at me.

“You heard what he said, Stone,” the other Serpent warns. “You want a _real_ war, Stone? Because you know we’ll give it to you.”

“Peabody promised us some product. That’s a _private_ transaction,” Snowy interrupts, his shoulders hunched forward, his mouth set into a snarl. “Nothing to do with Serpents. Nothing to do with you or your kid, F.P.”

I blink in surprise at the older Serpent, stunned that Jughead’s own Dad, the leader of the Serpents for so many years, is here in front of me – that he is even _defending_ me and Gideon.

“If Peabody is dealing in the Southside, then it has everything to do with the Serpents,” F.P replies. “And if Peabody is threatening _kids_ – _my_ kid, _Serpent_ kids – then it has _everything_ to do with me. You really want to test us tonight? Then keep doing what you’re doing, and you’ll see exactly what happens.”

Stone purses his lips, then shifts his eyes toward Snowy. Snowy licks the blood from his knuckles and shrugs.

“Guess we got the goods,” Stone nods.

He grips my arm again and throws me against the concrete, so hard that I feel my palms shred against it. I land on my hip, a bolt of pain rushing through me. I feel hands on my arms and almost kick out, thinking that it is Stone on top of me, but then I hear a soft voice whisper ‘ _you’re okay, I got you, can you stand-…_ ’

Gently pulled upward, I bump against a strong, broad chest – a chest covered in a jacket which reads BULLDOGS. Archie Andrews helps me steady myself and then he lifts a hand to lightly touch my cheek. I almost balk against him, so stunned and confused, until he explains that my cheek is scraped from the fall and he just wants to check if it needs medical attention. Jughead bends to help Gideon, he pulls him onto unsteady feet. Blood pours from his nostrils, his nose all swollen and red.

I am trembling so badly that I think my legs might give out and I really want Sweet Pea – I feel a little like Rosie who can only be soothed in my arms, because I really want him, really want to be held, but he is at home – he is at home and that is so much safer for him, I had to do this for him-…

“I had to do this for him,” I slur aloud. It seems as if my lip has been stung by a bee, it swells and swells, so that it blocks all of my words and only the smallest sounds can slip out, all distorted and slow. “It is so much safer that-…”

“Mila, it’s okay,” Jughead tells me gently. He pulls me from Archie, lets me grip onto him like a lifeboat in this tumultuous sea – he secures me, anchors me in a hug and lets me ramble the same words over and over, _safer, safer, I had to do this, safer_ …

** V **

Slumped against the backseat of the car, I stare blankly out the window at the streetlights which flit by in brief, orange orbs and stain the blackness of the sky. I am stupid, I decide. My Grandmother was right to tell me that. I never should have done this – but would it really have been any better if it had been Sweet Pea out there? I tear my sore, cried-out eyes toward the mirror in the front of the car and glare at myself. I still feel cold, slimy hands clamped onto my arms, still feel them gripping my chin. Stone would have tried to kiss me, if Michael had not been there – or maybe he would have – he would have -…

I ask Michael to pull over. I ask him to pull over again and again and then F.P glances back at me, warns Michael to really do it and I rush from the car and I throw up into the ditch alongside us. I feel each heaving retch and it comes out of me like the sick, blackened colour in Snowy’s eyes. I want to take it all out, but nothing more comes. I crawl back into the car, limp.

I don’t know where Archie and Jughead went – Gideon went with them, that is all I know, and he tried to tell me how sorry he was even though I am not sure what he had to apologise for – and I don’t know where we are going – and I don’t want the car to stop but then the Sunnyside trailer-park sign splashes me in its faded warmth and I strain myself to move from the backseat. I feel an ache in my hip, it makes my left leg feel like lead, dragged behind me.

His trailer is there; it smoulders in orange warmth, a beacon in this cold, unforgiving sea which swirls inside of me, around and around in its waves. Michael pulls his phone from his pocket. He will tell Ruth, he will tell her what happened, and another rush of nausea overcomes me – but he promises that it will all work out, that he can sort this out, not to be afraid. F.P waits until Sweet Pea opens his door before he leaves us. He makes sure that someone holds me because I cannot seem to hold myself up anymore.

Sweet Pea pulls me into the trailer. He is so full of confusion and I realise that nobody has told him anything, nobody has called him to work this out, sort this out, not to be afraid – and the light from his trailer finally falls over me and his hands loosen around me as if he might fall too. He whispers, “Mila, why is there blood on your shirt?”

I am not even sure if it is mine. I rasp, “Sweet Pea, I did something really stupid-…She was right, I’m really stupid-…I just thought you would be safer-…that I had to-…I had to-…”

I tell him. I tell him in heaving retches, tell him in sick and blackened words, I tell him each and every bit of it. There are more dents in his walls after that, he trashes his own trailer when he kicks at his drawers and he smashes plates until he stands in his kitchen and breathes heavily. He turns his dark stare toward that teddy-bear which had I gotten him from the arcade, still perched on his shattered drawer, its red hearts stitched into its soft white fur.

Regret fills him. He tries to tell me how sorry he is, like Gideon had. I am not sure what he has to apologise for either – and I don’t know where we are going, but he bends in front of me, takes my hands in his and presses his lips against the scrapes which stain my palms and he tells me, “This is over, Mila – Peabody will never force us to do anything _ever_ again, I promise-…”

He has always kept his promises, always kept his word. He listens.

Behind him, I glimpse the drawing which Rosie had made of us, pinned against his wall; and the tears come hot and sudden, as if that tumultuous sea is now inside of me and it pours out in harsh, trembling sobs, until the colours of her drawing fade into inky blackness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Just before I get any comments on this, I am aware of the repetition of certain phrases, it was purposefully done because I wanted to show how Mila is not thinking right or able to think clearly hehe...thank you...


	14. chapter fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so here are the apologies and weak excuses for the lateness in this update: sorry, and I also work a lot, I worked six/seven days last week and so sometimes writing gets pushed down on the list of priorities (unfortunately and with great regret).
> 
> Otherwise here is another chapter of teenagers yelling at each other over stuff (also known as Riverdale).

_chapter fourteen: here she comes again_

* * *

 

I never speak of it in the next couple of days, that little scuffle in the parking-lot between myself and those men. I never want it mentioned and I skirt around the gentle prompts from Ruth. The night that it happened, I told Rosie that the bruises had come from falling off a bicycle. She plopped onto the sofa alongside me and pecked each cut, smoothed each plaster beneath clumsy fingertips. Sweet Pea had been in the hall with Ruth and I heard them talk, but I held Rosie close and breathed in that soft, floral scent from our detergent. Rosie wiggled from me and blinked at me owlishly, her small hands scrunched into the folds of my shirt. She glanced at the hall, as if she could hear each word but I knew that she could only hear those faint murmurs and her eyes drifted toward me once more, drinking in those bruises and cuts. Her breath had been hot against my cheek; she whispered, “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Mila.”

Sweet Pea slammed the door behind him.

ii

For a little while, I wallow in my bedroom with blankets drawn tight around me. I think too much about those little scenarios in which Michael never made it to the parking-lot and it was just myself and Gideon against those men – and I think of how Stone had slithered his hands around my waist and held my chin in his grip and pulled me close against him – so, so close that I feel him here, now, in this cocoon of blankets – his eyes had been filled with –…

_Girly, girly. Out this late, alone?_

iii

The wooden floorboards in the hall creak beneath careful footsteps. Quickly, I smear clenched fists against my face which is stained in a reddish colour, my cheeks swollen from tears and my nose sore from sniffles. I brace myself for Ruth. Instead, there comes a strangle shuffle of paper and I watch a couple of pamphlets being pushed beneath the doorframe. Slowly, I pull myself from my bedsheets and pick them up, flipping them over and reading their bold headlines.  

_BOXING FOR GIRLS – COMMUNITY CENTRE CLASSES -…_

I hear the crinkle of leather and a soft sigh. “You have been through some rough things, kid.”

Michael stands in the hall. I crouch to peek out through the keyhole, spot his silhouette leaned against the wall across from my bedroom with his arms crossed, but I cannot quite see his face. I feel a little childish and that feeling bubbles forth in the form of my words because I mutter, “What would you know about it?”

He shrugs. Even if I could not glimpse little snippets of him through this narrow hole, I could still hear it in the wrinkling leather and the shift of his body.

“I know that it takes a lot to carry this stuff around with you. It almost feels like something – like something _alive_ , you know? Like it sits on your shoulders and it gets heavier and heavier with every step. And it stays in you, Mila, that stuff. It stays in you, and it starts to get _too_ heavy. And one day, it feels like nothing you do will ever get that weight off you. So, if you ask me what I know about it – I would say that I know a lot about it. I’ve been carrying around my own for a long time now.”

“Do you feel like you’ll ever get rid of it?”

“No. But I feel like it got a little lighter now that there are people around to help me carry it.”

I stare at the wooden grooves in my door and then feel my lips quirk upward into a fond smile. “Michael, have you been reading that one book Ruth about wayward teenagers and how to help them?”

“No.” There is a drawn-out silence. “Is it working, though? Because, if not, chapter two helped me prepare a whole other speech for you. It was a metaphor about flowers and youth blossoming or something like that, I think. Way, _way_ more embarrassing for the both of us.”

I snort and lean my forehead against the door, grinning stupidly. Then my grin drips away from me, drips onto the floorboards and pools around my feet when I think of all the other things which float around my brain. I open my mouth to speak and shake my head, only to open the door and face him. He still leans against the wall, his eyes drifting to meet mine.

“Everyone asks me about the foster homes and about my Grandmother and – and sometimes – sometimes I just don’t _want_ to talk about those things,” I tell him. “And it feels like if I don’t talk then people think I’m not – I don’t know, like I’m not _healing_ or something. But it isn’t like that. Maybe I just don’t want to talk about the other stuff because all the _good stuff_ is here. Is that so bad?”

Michael blinks, his arms dropping from his chest. “Damn. Chapters two and three of that ‘how-to-help-wayward-teenagers’ book did _not_ prepare me for this stuff.”

I blush a little, embarrassed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t-…”

“Mila, it was a joke. Look – I’m not asking you to talk. I’m trying to tell you that there are other ways to get out those feelings if talking isn’t your thing. Boxing is just one possibility – a chance to meet other kids your age, a chance to hit something other than walls. Because, you know, _I’m_ the one who has to fix those dents.”

“Well, you might want to start on that because those dents are still there,” I tease, smiling softly.

Michael lets out a low whistle. He reaches for me, holds me in a light headlock and ruffles my hair despite my protests. I shake him off and snort at his feigned stumbling, as if I had really fought him. “Get a load of this one! Think you’re the boss of this house now, Mila?”

“It was either me or the fishes, Michael-…” I grumble, brushing my fingers through my tangled hair.

He laughs and turns for the staircase, smoothing out his leather jacket. I watch him descend the first step before I blurt, “Michael?”

“Yeah, kid?”

“Thank you – and I’m glad you’re feeling lighter.”

“As a feather,” he smiles. “And you will too. You just gotta _let_ yourself feel it.”

I nod. “Was that in chapter four?”

“Chapter five,” he corrects, grinning at me. “I’m keeping chapter four for the next teen-pep-talk moment.”

iv

Toni texts me that night; she tells me that she had an argument with Sweet Pea and he stormed off with Fangs. I call her with trembling hands and she explains that she had only come around his place for a little chat, but Toni could tell that his temper was that of a roaring fire and he sizzled fast, burnt everyone around him and then bolted for town. Fangs only followed because he was afraid that Sweet Pea might do something stupid alone, that he might come across a gang of Ghoulies and fight them just for the kick of it.

I dart from the house before I even really think about it and march toward town. I can only think of Sweet Pea and Ghoulies and his broad form contorted with arms held around his head, like Jughead had been that night in the school, beaten so much that he could barely _breathe_ -…

And Sweet Pea _still_ has bruises from Peabody and he _still_ has dreams about that night. He never talks about it either and I wonder what it is about us that makes us so stubborn even when it hurts us.

Toni also mentions that Jughead wants a Serpent meeting. The words pass right over me until her soft voice asks, “Well, are you gonna come or not?”

“You said a _Serpent_ meeting, Toni. I’m not quite Serpent yet,” I huff, out of breath from my rapid pace, pushing through the park and onto the main street of the Southside.

“Yet,” she repeats coyly. I can hear her smirk from the other end.

“ _Toni_ -…” I groan.

“All I’m saying is, if Betty ‘ _Perfect-Ponytail_ ’ Cooper can become a Serpent, then you-…”

I hold still in surprise. “ _Betty Cooper_ is a Serpent now?”

“Sweet Pea didn’t mention it? She did that stupid, outdated Serpent dance and-…”

“Mila?”

I spin around, startled by the voice. Fangs stands by a grocery-store, leaning against its brick wall with one hand stuffed into his pocket and the other latched around his phone, held in front of him, now forgotten. He seems as surprised as I am but soon pulls himself off the wall to come closer. I mumble a faint excuse to Toni that I may have found Sweet Pea through Fangs.

Before I hang up the phone, I hear her blow out a raspberry and mutter, “Good luck, girl.”

“Hey Fangs,” I smile. It comes out strained, my smile, and he can tell.

“You’re looking for Sweet Pea, huh?”

I nod. “From what I hear, it seems he might not be in the best mood.”

“You’re telling me,” Fangs scoffs, rolling his eyes. “I tried to tell him he should cool off, maybe just talk to you or…Well, you know like I do, Sweet Pea never tends to listen when you tell him what to do. Guess I learned that a long time ago.”

I can hear the frustration and annoyance bleeding through his tone and it makes me wince. “Do you know where he went now?” I ask gently.

“ _The Roadhouse_ , a bar the next street over,” Fangs mutters. “Didn’t feel like following him this time, you know?”

“I understand. I’m sorry, Fangs.”

“Don’t apologise for him. Don’t get into that habit,” Fangs says. “I’ve done it enough for the guy myself. Just-…Just knock some sense into him, all right?”

“I will. Thanks, Fangs.”

v

_The Roadhouse_ flashes in neon-red screams; its floors are a cluster of black and white stripes, its walls made of dense red curtains and harsh, white lights which sting my eyes and blind me. I push through crowds of bodies, through sweat and foreign hands, until I stumble into another section made of tables pushed together, filled with chatting people from all around the Southside. Thumping music makes it hard to hear at all, but those mouths seem slow and sloppy. Their faces stretch wide, like some abstract painting, pushed against one another in silent laughter drowned out by the vibration of the bass and then it occurs to me that maybe these people are not just drunk and maybe they are hopped up on something just a little bit stronger. I wonder if Sweet Pea came here for that and the thought rolls through me, runs me right over like a truck, so much so that it makes my head _spin_ -…

Hands grip my arms and I think of Stone and Snowy instantly. _You’re a pretty girl, why would you want me to ruin that face of yours-…_

I feel warmth; a hard chest, a hand latched around mine and the dumb stumble of my feet once he pulls me out of the bar and into the alleyway outside and we are always in alleyways lately, like we can never talk anywhere but there, only I like the cool air and it soothes my hot skin and makes it a lot easier to breathe because that bar had been more stuffy than I had realised and it hits me all at once.

“…And you’re just wandering around again because _what_ – you didn’t _learn_ anything from that parking lot, right? Or you’re just-…”

Sweet Pea paces in front of me, throws his arms out in his rush of anger, but his words wash right over me and into some distant sea, swept into another world. I think of Toni and Fangs and I can only guess what he had said to them. I can only guess what he did when he went back to his trailer after he left our place and I can only guess the things that he tells himself to make him like this, to make him so angry that he hardly even sees me, so angry that he sees his mother and father and his little sister Bug and he sees all the Northsiders too, he sees the Bulldogs and Ghoulies and all those other people who ever spat on him.

And then he _really_ sees me. He really sees me, because his mouth slowly closes, and his body becomes all tired and slow, he feels the cool air, it soothes his skin, he can breathe now. It hits him all at once.

“Are you done now?” I ask softly.

His expression crumbles inward, he lets out some horrid noise which lingers between a scoff and a scream.

“We can’t do this anymore, Sweet Pea.”

He holds deathly still. “Can’t do what?” he croaks.

I understand that he thinks I mean - _this_ – us – Mila and Sweet Pea – _us_. “I mean that you can’t just blow up at your friends when they’re trying to help you and you can’t just disappear on them.”

He looks childish, his lips pout. “I told Toni that I didn’t _care_ if Betty Cooper became a Serpent and I told Fangs that I didn’t _care_ if he wanted to come to this stupid bar either. So, _what_? What does it even _matter_?”

“So, one day Toni will stop coming to your trailer and she will stop telling you things. And one day Fangs will never follow you to this bar or another bar or anywhere else,” I say. “And you’ll realise that they got tired of being your punching-bags, Sweet Pea.” I look him in the eye and he flinches from it, his body still poised as if he might just storm out like he had earlier in front of Toni. “You _know_ what you’re really angry about, Pea, but you won’t admit it.”

“What am I angry about, Mila?” he retorts bitterly. “Is it that – _maybe_ – my girlfriend got caught up with _drug-dealers_ because of _me_ , and that maybe she almost got – that she-…”

He bites his cheeks, I can tell. He holds it in and holds it in; and it festers and rots and becomes anger and ruins him.

Suddenly, I think of Ruth in those first few weeks that I had lived with her and Rosie. She had given me that bicycle and taught me how to ride it, held the handlebars and steadied me. She told me that I was a kid and I had laughed at her for it. _You are a kid, Mila._

It strikes me that maybe she was right. Maybe she _is_ right.

“You have to stop blaming yourself,” I tell him. “We both need to stop blaming ourselves – we’re kids, Sweet Pea, we’re learning – we’re _trying_.”

“It’s not enough,” he replies weakly. He takes a step toward me, faltering, uncertain, like a new-born foal. I catch him, slither my arms beneath his and press myself against his chest. He stands motionless for a moment, until his arms finally hold me against him too. He lets out a long, long sigh and all of that fight flies away with it. “We can’t do this anymore. You’re right. But I don’t know what else we can do. What are we supposed to _do_ , Mila?”

“Instead of turning Toni and Fangs away, maybe we could ask them that same question. Maybe we can ask Michael and Jughead and all the other Serpents. We’re not alone in this, remember? We’re stronger than Penny Peabody. She’s hurt more than just us in this town.”

“You’re wise for a _kid_ ,” he snorts.

“Michael might have enlightened me,” I mumble with a smile. “He read a book.”

“Think he might let me borrow it?”

I laugh. “Get in line, Sweet Pea.”

vi

Around noon the next day, Jughead sends me a strange text in which he offers a sundae if I will walk out of the house, which I do. There he stands, at the fence, his face pinched in deep contemplation, distracted by his distant characters in his distant stories, still untold. My boots crunch against fallen leaves, a blend of orange and reds, cracked and shattered. The sound must draw him from his thoughts, because he turns toward me and pulls me into a surprising hug. Neither of us are particularly touchy, especially not toward each other. I think Betty has softened him, somehow. Maybe Sweet Pea has softened me too, in his own way, because I hug Jughead even tighter and find comfort in his hold.

“Betty is a Serpent.”

It is mumbled into my hair because of the difference in height between us, but I hear him all the same. I pull away from him, attempting to read his expression. His eyes are conflicted, darting away from mine, but his shoulders are not so tense anymore.

I nod at him. “So I heard.”

He rambles, “It was this whole Serpent dance – she wants to be part of my world, but she doesn’t seem to realise how – how _dangerous_ it can be or the kind of people you meet when you’re a Serpent like-…like-…”

“People like Snowy and Stone?” I ask.

Jughead recoils as if I struck him before he sinks into remorse. “Yeah. Yeah,” he admits slowly. “Like them. Those guys that you met in that parking lot, Mila – I don’t want Betty to meet those kind of guys any more than I want you to meet them.”

“She has the Serpents to protect her,” I say. “I had them, too.”

I know he wants to argue. I can also tell that he is tired, and maybe he has had this argument one too many times with Betty herself. So, I ease my arm into the crook of his own and pull him into an leisurely stroll away from my house.

“I was promised a sundae,” I joke lightly, poking at his arm. “So, where is it?”

“If you’re willing to come over to the Northside, you’ll get your sundae, you vulture. Besides, I was kind of hoping you might…be willing to let Betty… question you.”

I pause, pulling us both into a standstill. “Question me? About _what_?”

Jughead looks awkward – that is, even more awkward than his usual self. “Um, your experience in foster-care.”

“Why would Betty want to know about that? You do realise you’re both too young to adopt, right?” I smile.

Jughead scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, like that’d go down well with Alice Cooper.”

I had already heard enough stories of her mother to understand exactly what he meant by that.

“Betty found out something unexpected recently,” Jughead continues. “She has a brother – a brother she has never met or even _known_ about her whole life. Her mother put him up for adoption after he was born and now Betty wants to find him. She wants her mother to forgive herself for it and see if her brother might forgive her too and possibly become part of the Cooper family again.”

“And why does she need to ask me about foster-care just for that? Can’t she ask her brother when she meets him, see what he feels about it?”

“Betty – Betty is a little bit of a… _perfectionist_ ,” Jughead explains carefully, right as we start to walk again. “She wants everything to be perfect when she puts a plan together and I think she just wants to make her brother feel welcomed and – and to do that, she feels like she needs to _understand_ him.”

I am about to tell Jughead that Betty can use a search-engine online if she really wants answers, but then I consider all the stuff that Michael had said. “Chapter five,” I mutter beneath my breath.

“What?”

I shrug off his confused expression and say, “All right, fine. I want two sundaes for this, though.”

“ _Two_ sun-…Okay. You got it,” he winces, catching sight of my warning glare. “Two sundaes.”

“Extra chocolate syrup.”

“Extra chocolate syrup,” he repeats, nodding.

I smile at him. “Thanks, Jug,” I say gently.

“For what? Crippling my bank account to grant you these sundaes?”

“For being there in the parking lot that night.”

He blinks, taken aback. He swallows and replies, “I’m glad I was there too, Mila.”

We walk along in a comfortable silence, arms still linked. A couple of seconds later, he ruins it by saying, “Really though, _two_ sundaes, Mila-…”

“ _Jug_!”

vii

Jughead had not anticipated that Betty might bring her raven-haired pal whose pearl bracelet and kitten-heels cost more than my house and the entire Sunnyside trailer-park combined. _Veronica Lodge_ , she introduces herself, sidling into the booth with a bounce. Jughead glances at me apologetically and I almost snort at his withered expression.

Betty follows, ponytail bobbing and pastel sweater ever-present, plopping into the seat alongside Veronica because Jughead has already sat beside me, almost like a barrier between myself and Veronica. She seems – _enthusiastic_. She rattles off our orders with a flourish and then laces her fingers together, rests her chin against them and says, “So, Mila, why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

While our sundaes and milkshakes are placed in front of us, I glance at Jughead whose face falls ever further, a hand lifted to rub at his jaw. We offer our gratitude to our waiter first before I look at Veronica and say, “You start.”

Veronica doesn’t seem to take offense. Quite smoothly, she launches into rapid-fire speech: “Veronica Lodge, socialite whose once _oh-so-glamorous_ lifestyle ground to a halt once her Daddy was arrested and she had to abandon her plush, luxurious New York penthouse for a less plush, less luxurious penthouse here in Riverdale. Okay, shoot!”

Blinking at her, a little thrown by her bluntness, I find myself lost for words.

Veronica smiles and adds, “What did you think? That was just the proposed blurb for my upcoming autobiography, soon to hit shelves in all reputable bookstores nationwide.”

Betty lets out a laugh which punctures the odd tension between us all.

I smile, too. “I guess I can try. Mila Mason, socialite of foster-homes – whose Daddy was probably arrested and more than likely shared a cell with yours at some point, for all I know – and who has only ever seen penthouses on television and whose idea of luxury is this chocolate sundae.”

“Very good,” she purrs, leaning back against her seat with another bounce, crossing her legs. Her eyes look toward Jughead. “Juggie, did you not tell Mila about my Daddy?”

“You’ll be surprised to learn that not all of my conversations revolve around _you_ , Ms Lodge,” he mutters flatly.

“I find that hard to believe, Mr Jones,” she grins wickedly, plucking a cherry from her sundae and ripping its stem from between her teeth. Holding it there, she drawls, “All conversations revolve around me in some way.”

“Mila,” Betty cuts in. I turn my attention toward her and find her eyes wide, filled with typical Cooper-esque eagerness. “I know Jughead explained this all to you and it might seem a little strange but – but this possible reunion with my brother – it could really help my Mom out of a dark place in her life.”

“I can only tell you about my experiences, Betty. I’m not sure how that would really help you with your brother.”

“My Mom never wanted to give him away. She regrets it _every day_ and it’s been eating away at her _for years_. But before I meet my brother, I want to be prepared. I don’t want to walk in there and act like I know anything about foster-care or what he has been through.”

“Even if I tell you, you still won’t know anything,” I tell her. “Because each kid is different. I knew a hundred kids in foster-care. Doesn’t mean we all feel the same way about it.”

I must sound a little standoffish and blunt because Jughead quickly jumps in and says, “But you can offer one unique perspective among many others. That’s all you need, right, Betty?”

Betty nods, smiling gratefully at him. “I just-…I want to _try_ to understand what my brother might have been through before I really get to meet him, Mila. I guess I’m just – I’m scared that he might not like me, or he might…resent me. Because I wasn’t the one she-…”

“Gave up,” I finish for her. I let out a sigh and lean forward, elbows on the table. “Fine. I can tell you my own story and you can do what you like with it, but just remember what I said – you still won’t understand him fully. I’ve been in the system since I was about three. I know what my Dad looks like from photographs and I met him maybe a handful of times. I don’t know my Mom. They were deemed unfit parents. I was…I was in foster-homes for a long time, maybe four years - passed around until I was about seven or so, and then my Grandmother tried to claim custody.”

“So, she took you in?” Veronica asks, perking up in her seat.

“It didn’t work out,” I shrug.

Veronica clasps her hands together, scrunches her lips tight and looks contrite. “Oh.”

“But it did work out, because I found a place in the Southside,” I continue. “Even though they were pretty much about to send me to the State Home.”

“That’s it!” Betty blurts out. “I found out my brother was in the State Home for most of his time in foster-care.”

I feel my mouth fall open of its own accord. “Most of his time? How long is that?”

“Ten, twelve years? He was placed in foster-homes but I don’t think anything really stuck for him,” she guesses, her eyes flitting between Veronica and Jughead before she looks at me again. “Do you know about the State Home?”

“The State Home is what the older kids in foster-care use to scare the younger kids. They tell them if they don’t do this or that, they’ll be carted off to the State Home and left there.”

“So, it’s just used as some old story to scare kids?” Veronica asks doubtfully.

“It isn’t just a story – the State Home is this big, ugly building with barbed-wire fences and a military style of existence from what I heard.”

“From what you heard,” Jughead repeats. He looks at Betty worriedly, noticing her downcast expression. “She could be wrong, Betty.”

“I could be,” I agree. “But I do know that the State Home is the place for kids who couldn’t find any other placement – either through their own behaviour or a lack of suitable options. And another thing that is certain – if you’re put in the State Home, you don’t get out of it until you’re eighteen.”

Betty flops back against her seat and runs her hands over her face. “Will he even _want_ to know us after all he’s been through?”

I shrug even if she is not looking at me and then feel the hard, bony elbow of Jughead jutting into my ribcage. I glare at him, but he tilts his chin toward his girlfriend, eyebrows pulled into a stern, scolding glower. I look at Betty again and feel a rush of compassion for her.

“Look, Betty – if my Grandmother had cleaned up her act a little and _really_ worked on getting guardianship after all the stuff I went through in those foster-homes, then it would have meant more to me than you could ever understand. I would have been able to forgive all the years that came before it because I knew she was at least _trying_. I don’t know what your brother will feel, but I’m sure that it would be worth the effort to find out.”

I surprise myself with my own words, my own frankness. Jughead seems to be, too, because he looks at me with eyebrows raised.

“Thank you, Mila,” Betty smiles.

She looks toward Veronica and I take the opportunity to ram my own elbow right into Jughead, smirking when he lets out a muffled yelp and bends against the table.

“Jug?” Betty asks in concern, reaching out her hand to touch his arm.

He winces, cracks an eye open and looks at Betty. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Guess that cherry really has a _zing_ to it.”

I reach over and pluck a cherry from his sundae, plopping it in my mouth and grinning at him.

viii

Somewhere around six in the evening, we call it quits and stand from the booth to shrug on our coats. Veronica squeals over my tattered coat which reminds her of a collection she had once seen in her more _oh-so-glamorous_ days and I find myself minutely more amused than annoyed by her. She tries a bit too hard. Then again, I suppose it is hard to settle into Riverdale from the outside – I should know. The bell of the diner tinkles behind her and a large, whooping group of Bulldogs bumble toward the booths, celebrating some great victory in a game from the sounds of their screeches. I glance at Jughead and he returns a quick, assuring nod that we will slip out of here quickly – and, more importantly, _unnoticed_.

I turn around, toward the door, intend on doing just that. Instead, I smack right into Archie Andrews.

I must crane my neck just to look at him because of his height, but I glimpse the spark of recognition in his eyes. I realise that he had been coming over here for Veronica, unaware of my presence until just now. I am not sure just what either of us expects, from the way we stand silently in front of each other, awkward and unsure of ourselves.

I think of him on that night, in the parking lot, his soothing words and how he had helped me stand when it seemed like my legs could no longer handle the task. But I also think of the Bulldogs behind him and Reggie among them, because I hear his voice above all others and it sends a bolt of anxiety blended into anger through me all at once. I want to step around him and ask Reggie what is so _damn_ funny-…

_We can’t do this anymore._

I take a deep breath and smile at Archie. I can tell it surprises him, but he returns it, a slow and hesitant smile that soon shines with a natural brilliance. I suppose he really is handsome behind that trashy Bulldog jacket after all.

“Thank you, Archie,” I say sincerely. “For helping me that night.”

“Anyone would have done the same,” he replies.

“No, they wouldn’t.”

I think he knows that I am talking about men like Stone and Snowy. So, he nods. He nods and there is an understanding between us in that one, delicate moment in which the Bulldogs are drowned out and the Southside and Northside merge into one.

“Enjoy your evening with your friends, Archie.”

“Thanks, Mila. See you around?”

“You bet,” I smile at him.

I turn around and find Jughead, walk outside with him and start our little trip back to the Southside. Jughead talks about his plan for Peabody and I talk about Sweet Pea and then he tells me about his little sister some more and the whole time I am wondering if this is what Michael had been talking about; like a feather.

 


End file.
